The idea that Chinese people eat cats and dogs has always seemed too far away to be a reality - like I've always felt that 'cos it happens on the other side of the world it might not necessarily be true or it's just a legend about what they used to do that's stopped now type thing.
At the weekend I discovered that it's both verry real and exactly what they do when we drove past a market in Kaula Lumpur on Friday night that's reknowned for dog and cat cuisine. I
know.
The place is called Alor and it was literally a stone's throw from my hotel - here it is:
Our tour guide told us about it and went on to ask if we'd noticed how few people have pets in Malaysia - which I had. Since I've been here I haven't seen one single person out and about with a pet, I haven't seen even a hint of a dog and there's absolutely no mention or images or advertising etc for things to do with dogs or cats or pets anywhere.
There are loads of cats around but they're all scrawny stray ones who loiter around begging tourists for food - obviously hanging onto their last vestiges of life before they get whacked to get cooked.
We couldn't stop at the market on Friday so on Saturday I walked down to find a stall selling them. I had no clue what I was gonna do when I found one - 'spesh 'cos of the Chinese mafia etc - but I decided I'd go, see exactly how they were cooked - if you could actually see their corpses on spits and so on - and respond to it based on my freak-out in the moment.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) none of the food stores were out for day yet and I had a date I had to get to so I couldn't hang around for them to open. Despite not seeing the nightmare directly the feeling of the dreadful deeds that go down at the market hovered heavily in thick, humid air and made me spend the rest of the day taking peeks at my cellphone which has a screensaver of my Snoot aka my Jack Russell Mischka Tagg aka one of my best friends.
I have SUCH a huge problem with all this and what's so frustrating is that it makes no difference and there's nothing you can do to change it. I asked about animal campaign groups and there aren't any so basically no-one does or says anything about it.
To me it's no different from eating people.