고양이 천국 or Cat Heaven

My boyfriend likes to call our neighborhood "고양이 천국" or Cat Heaven, because it's pretty hard to walk home at night without passing at least one if not several stray cats. I'm not quite sure why there are so many cats, but it could be the close proximity to the Jungang market, plus restaurant waste bins left open and people who buy them snacks from the convenience store here.

We'd never spent much time with the cats, until Friday night.

Usually when we call the cats, they just glare at us and run away. Sometimes we've taken some fun photos of them along the street, but they're not exactly friendly to strangers.

Friday night as we walked home we called to a cat walking down the street, and, strangely, the cat came running toward us. It rubbed up against us and wanted to cuddle. The boyfriend figured she must be hungry and ran into the convienence store to buy one of those nasty sausage sticks to feed it. The cat gobbled that up without hesitating.

Then we walked home and the cat follwed us. We were curious to see if she'd come up the stairs to the third floor, but she wandered in but then wandered back out. We brought out a can of vegetable tuna for her to eat. She ate the whole thing! I was a little afraid she was going to follow us up to the house after that, but I should have known better. Cats know they are cute and adorable and know that people will do anything for them if they act cute and cuddly. But as soon as they get what they want, they go on with their lives as if nothing ever happened. She walked away and got into a fight with another cat on the street.

I feel bad for all these street cats, though they seem to get enough food to eat in our neighborhood. One day I passed a cat carrying a whole fish in it's mouth that it had evidently found in the market. Other days I see them pass me carrying a plastic baggy of food that looks to me like cat food someone must leave out for them. This cat clearly has the cute act all worked out to get free food when she wants.