Cat-Sniffing Has Officially Taken Over China’s Youth
By Carl Samson
More and more Chinese are discovering the ecstasy that sniffing their cats brings!
It’s common knowledge that cats like sniffing things, but humans sniffing cats?
Among them is 30-year-old Zhou Shuaibo, a film company employee who sniffs his orange tabby cat several times a day.
Zhou, who also calls himself a “shovel feces officer,” told Xinhua, “My wife and I are not ready to have a child, so we give all our love to our cat… My cat has supreme status at home.”
As such, Zhou is also one of the many fans of “cloud cats” — felines whose photos and videos have literally taken over social media.
One of the most famous was the late Lou Lou, who was featured in several memes and amassed more than 690,000 followers before passing away in October.
These cats are internet sensations that now make up a huge market.
On Zhihu alone, China’s version of Quora, there are some 180,000 followers of cat posts, twice the number of dog posts.
Taobao, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, earned roughly 10 billion yuan (more than $1.5 billion) from cat-related products last year, including food, clothing, accessories and other maintenance items.
Interestingly, many of these cat lovers are China’s unmarried youth who live alone in big cities. They are reportedly more eager to spend on innovative products, such as automatic cat toilets and intelligent water dispensers.
One of them is Du Fang, a finance employee in Shanghai who spends 10,000 yuan ($1,557) a month for his American shorthair, about one-fifth of his salary.
“My cat eats salmon and vitamins every day. A bag of cat food imported from Canada is 760 yuan, and the cat litter is made of Tofu,” Du told Xinhua.
“I do not care how much I spend. I want my cat to be happy.”
Needless to say, China’s youth has found a very satisfying companionship in cats, and we can only expect more to join the Sniffers’ Club soon.
Move over, Crazy Cat Lady and Crazy Cat Gentleman — the Crazy Cat Country is here!
Do you have a cat and sniff him/her, too? What’s your favorite thing about him/her? Let us know in the comments!
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