The reality of adopting a kitten in Korea

Our new pet cat, Podo / Courtesy of Jeong Ki-poom

By Scott Shepherd

Since our wedding, my wife and I have been thinking about getting a cat ― by which I mean that I've been trying to convince my wife to let us get one. And last week, after over two years of careful consideration (pleading), we (my wife) finally decided that we were ready.

So off to the animal rescue center we trundled.

Weirdly, not long afterward ― indeed, while I was still trying to get my thoughts together for this piece ― The Korea Times published an article about what appears to be a kind of utopian animal rescue shelter, called the Bom Center in Paju. I suppose there's something in the air these days in Korea.

We live nowhere near Paju, so we happily settled on our local animal rescue center. The process was pretty straightforward. The person at the desk ― I suppose a veterinarian nurse ― led us through the hospital to the animal viewing room, and presented in turn each of the kittens up for adoption. We chose the youngest, signed some forms, paid for a few (pricey) medical procedures, and we were off. On the way home, we agreed on the name, "Podo," the Korean word for grape. Now we have a pet cat.

However, our experience was nothing like what I imagine the good residents of Paju go through when they visit their local pet rescue center.

The place where we got Podo consisted of two rooms: one customer-facing room and one back room. The former was a little shabby, but otherwise looked much like an ordinary shop in Korea, with a cashiers' desk at one end and along the walls, an assortment of pet toys, toothbrushes and ― this being Korea ― pet clothes for sale.

At the rear of the first room is a door that leads to the back room, where the cats are kept and where, presumably, the vets perform their work. As soon as our veterinarian guide opened that door, we were hit by the overwhelming odor of cat feces and urine. Inside there were two cages on the left, each with a dung-filled litter tray and about four or five kittens apiece. It was dark and dank.

Now I'm hardly the poster child for the WWF. I'm a proud omnivore and human supremacist. I believe animals are inferior to humans and should be treated as such; I love eating meat and I hate the personification of beasts. If we place too high a value on what some call an animal's rights, my personal view is that we risk devaluing the precious value of humanity. I positively loathe the sight of people carrying around little runt-like dogs dressed up in frilly pink costumes; a trip to the trendier areas of Seoul is therefore something of a risk for me.

Yet, despite these personal beliefs, I couldn't help but feel that the treatment of the cats in that shelter seems wrong. It was poorly ventilated, with no stimuli, no space, no light ― just a stinking, overcrowded den. Contrary to all my own expectations, I actually felt guilty about the cats we were leaving behind.

The lucky ones will be rescued and taken to what will hopefully be a much more pleasant environment. That's certainly the case for the newly-christened Podo. It is unfortunate that Podo's peers may spend the rest of their short days in that dingy room.

It would be better to let the cats roam free, surely.

True, Korea is a land of stark contrasts between seasons, and it takes one tough cookie of a feline to cope with the scorching summers and freezing winters. Even aside from the weather, a feral or wild feline has a veritable smorgasbord of ways to shuffle off its mortal coil. There are all kinds of dangers, both natural and man-made.

But the word, "rescue," has lost all meaning if we're just taking them from one perilous situation and putting them in another. All we've done is to change the rules. In that dark cage, the poor things owe their existence on whether a human happens to choose them before the vet decides that they need to free up the space. If it's too ugly or old or the wrong breed, the moggy will eventually be put down ― killed ― by someone from the very institution that touts itself as a rescue center. At least in the wild, a cat's chances have to do with its own actions.

Of course, the country faces other more pressing issues than the welfare of abandoned cats, and I usually try to highlight them in my columns. It is my opinion that is quite right to put people before pets. Maybe I'm making much ado about nothing. It's only been a few days since we got little Podo, and it already seems well-adjusted with no evident trauma from its months confined in that cage. Podo escaped. Maybe the system is working well, and those animals that do end up being put down are just the natural and necessary by-products of an otherwise functioning balance between the humans and animals of this land. Maybe, but probably not.

We can treat animals better than this. While the zoological nirvana in Paju might be too expensive to be scaled up nationally, it is certainly a start. It's time that humans treat abandoned and stray pets better. Indeed, the very capacity to do so is one of the things that shows we are, in fact, humans. Let's start acting like it.

Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.