Roo arrived in London on a drizzly Tuesday, eyes wide as the unfamiliar damp air curled into her fur. She’d spent her first years padding around a Hong Kong flat, her purr woven into the daily hum of my family’s life. When I left for the UK years ago, she stayed behind with my son, a constant in his city routine. But this year, after months of paperwork, vet clearances, and a flight that cost more than my first car, she is here. Roo has already claimed a spot on the garden fence as her vantage point, watching neighborhood foxes with the curiosity of a seasoned observer. I had forgotten the quiet joy that comes from sharing space with a cat, the way their presence reshapes the energy of a room without demanding it.
In Hong Kong, I’m not alone in rediscovering—or in many cases, discovering for the first time—the companionship of cats. The city’s feline population is no longer a footnote to its dog-loving image. More than 100,000 households now count a cat as part of the family. This isn’t a passing fad; it’s an entire economy. Earlier this month, the annual Cat Expo turned a convention hall into a maze of feline indulgence, drawing 180 exhibitors. There were stalls for high-end snacks and gourmet pâté in jewel-colored tins, tiny hooded sweatshirts for pets who tolerate fashion, and DNA testing services to detect hereditary diseases. The scale is a reminder that in Hong Kong, as in much of the world, cats have shifted from streetwise survivors to full-fledged family members. A recent survey pegged average monthly spending on a cat at over HK$2,000, and the “cat market” now tops HK$2.4 billion, up 9 percent from the previous year. More notable than the consumerism is the shift in priorities: owners are investing in preventive care, premium diets, and enrichment toys, a sign that the city’s cat culture is maturing into a form of care that values well-being over novelty.
But just as the expo packed up its stands and the city’s cat enthusiasts carried their shopping hauls home, the global internet reminded us how fragile this progress can feel. The day after the event, news broke from the UK: two 17-year-olds had been sentenced to detention for torturing and killing two kittens, their bodies found mutilated in a London park. The details were unbearable, but they became even darker in context. British police revealed they were investigating links to an international syndicate that encourages, records, and sells videos of cat abuse. These weren’t random acts of cruelty; they were content, monetized through encrypted channels and shared in communities that exist far from the bright, curated world of pet Instagram.
A BBC investigation traced some of this network’s roots to viral content that began circulating on mainland Chinese platforms—graphic videos of cat torture that were amplified by outrage and, in turn, copied by others. From there, the trend metastasized across borders, finding a home in hidden groups on Telegram and other encrypted apps, where anonymity becomes armor. Members encouraged each other to adopt cats from shelters, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, under the pretense of giving them homes, only to harm them for video content. It is exploitation stripped of any pretense, where the internet’s mechanics of virality serve the ugliest impulses.
Protests followed. In May, animal rights activists in cities from London to Tokyo to São Paulo organized demonstrations against cruelty to cats. Feline Guardians, a UK-based advocacy group, staged repeated protests outside the Chinese embassy in London, calling for mainland authorities to act. But the problem runs into the brick wall of legal frameworks. Mainland China’s laws cover livestock, laboratory animals, and wildlife, but there is no general prohibition on cruelty to companion animals. That gap makes it difficult to impose meaningful penalties, even in cases that spark national outrage. Some offenders are detained briefly or fined, but the deterrent effect is minimal. Tang Lijun, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, called in 2023 for a dedicated pet protection law, one that could include prison sentences. Tang pointed to the sheer scale of pet ownership—116 million cats and dogs in cities alone in 2022—and the repeated exposure of abuse cases online as proof that voluntary ethics are not enough.
Hong Kong’s legal framework is stronger, but it’s hardly modern. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance, enacted in 1935, wasn’t substantially amended until 2006, when the maximum penalty was increased to three years in prison. A government consultation in 2019 acknowledged the law’s limitations, particularly its reactive nature: authorities often cannot act until after abuse has taken place. In a city where cats live not just in homes but in shopfronts, cafés, and back alleys, that delay can mean the difference between prevention and postmortem outrage. Updating the law has become a long-promised reform that stalls in the margins of other legislative priorities.
The cruelty isn’t contained to any one geography. The same month as the UK sentencing, videos of abuse surfaced in Singapore, Japan, Turkey, and North America. In each case, the platforms themselves played an uncomfortable role. On mainstream networks, algorithms designed to prioritize engagement often push shocking content higher, even when labeled for moderation, because anger and disgust still translate into clicks and comments. In encrypted spaces, the dynamic is different but no less dangerous: content circulates among those seeking it, shielded from reporting tools, with communities policing themselves in ways that reinforce harm. There’s a cultural split in how these networks are addressed—some countries emphasize user responsibility and voluntary takedowns, others push for platform liability. The result is a patchwork that bad actors can navigate with ease.
In Hong Kong, the rise of a pampered pet culture exists alongside a history of community cats—semi-feral animals cared for by neighborhood feeders, tolerated by shopkeepers, woven into the city’s streetscape. The affection for cats has long been pragmatic; they were kept for pest control as much as for companionship. But the past decade’s shift toward viewing cats as family has brought a different kind of attachment. It’s what makes the cruelty stories feel so personally violating for owners, even those thousands of miles away. Online, the emotional current is complex: grief for the animals harmed, anger toward the perpetrators, and a creeping sense of helplessness against a machine that can amplify anything, noble or vile.
The protests and public outcry matter because they push cruelty out of the shadows. On Chinese social media, netizens have used their own accounts to reshare abuse videos, not to shock, but to identify and expose perpetrators. In some cases, that crowdsourced vigilance has led to detentions. It’s a risky form of activism—reposting such content can unintentionally feed the very algorithms that spread it—but it reflects a refusal to look away. The challenge is that the same attention that fuels outrage can also feed a niche economy where cruelty is packaged for consumption. The internet’s indifference to context means a video can be watched with horror by one viewer and delight by another, both counted as engagement.
Legislation alone won’t erase this contradiction. Stronger laws can make cruelty less consequence-free, but enforcement depends on political will, resources, and cross-border cooperation. Technology companies could take a harder line, cutting off distribution channels, embedding detection tools, and partnering with animal welfare organizations to trace the origins of abuse content. Some already do, but efforts are inconsistent, and the economic incentive to maintain user numbers often outweighs the reputational risk. The same digital infrastructure that can mobilize a rescue mission for a stranded kitten can also enable coordinated harm.
For those of us who share our lives with cats, the cruelty exists in a parallel universe that feels both distant and too close. The day I heard about the UK case, Roo was asleep on the back of the sofa, one paw covering her eyes in the theatrical way only cats manage. The idea that anyone could see a creature like her and respond with violence is incomprehensible—and yet, the headlines prove it happens, often enough to be organized. In response, we do what we can: donate to shelters, support legal reforms, amplify the work of rescue groups, and, in the smaller, daily ways, treat our own animals with the love and safety they deserve.
Hong Kong’s cat market will likely keep growing. The appetite for premium food, designer carriers, and veterinary care is underpinned by something more durable than trend: the recognition that cats enrich our lives simply by being in them. That recognition, if extended beyond the personal to the political, could push the city toward updating its laws and joining the countries where cruelty is met with more than mild rebuke. The legal gaps in mainland China remain the bigger challenge, not only for its own animals but for the role its platforms play in the global circulation of abuse content. Addressing that will require more than a deputy’s proposal; it will demand a shift in how the state perceives the value of animals in society.
There’s an irony in how cats occupy the internet’s culture. They are among the earliest viral stars, their images used to express humor, awkwardness, and affection across languages and borders. Entire genres of online communication have been shaped by their faces. Yet, in a darker mirror of that same reach, they have become props in videos that trade in suffering. The same shareability that can raise funds for a rescue can also turn cruelty into currency. This is the tension of digital life: the tools that connect us to joy can also connect us to its opposite.
Roo doesn’t know any of this, of course. She knows the patch of sunlight that moves across the kitchen floor each morning, the way the garden smells after rain, the sound of the back door opening just before a dish of food appears. In her presence, the world feels smaller, not because the larger one has vanished, but because the care we extend here, in this house, is the antidote to the neglect and violence elsewhere. The work of changing laws, platforms, and cultures is long and uneven. In the meantime, each act of care is its own quiet form of resistance.
Maybe that’s what the protests, the expos, the long-distance adoptions are trying to do—create pockets of a world where cats are safe, where their lives are valued, where the idea of harming them is as unthinkable as the opposite seems inevitable in other corners. In Hong Kong, that might mean faster legal reform. In China, it might mean public pressure that outpaces the censors. Online, it could mean finding ways to amplify joy without giving oxygen to cruelty. None of it is simple. But it begins, perhaps, the same way Roo began her new life here: by stepping into unfamiliar ground, looking around, and deciding that it’s worth staying.
WhatsApp
Instagram
Threads
