Meet the shop cats of Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district

A few years ago, after mov­ing back to her home city of Hong Kong from New York, Eri­ca was walk­ing around her new neigh­bour­hood of She­ung Wan. The res­i­den­tial area, set close to the finance dis­trict Cen­tral on Hong Kong Island, is known for its array of dried seafood shops, with dried scal­lops, prawns and much more lin­ing jars and trays in shop fronts.

But it wasn’t the food that imme­di­ate­ly caught Erica’s atten­tion. Look­ing down, she saw a tor­toise­shell tab­by cat relax­ing amid the bus­tle of peo­ple and traf­fic under the area’s high ris­es. ​“I stum­bled across one of the biggest stars of the shop cat com­mu­ni­ty,” she recalls. ​“Fei Zai, which trans­lates to ​‘Chub­by Boy’ in Eng­lish – the term can by used endear­ing­ly, or offen­sive­ly, but this was obvi­ous­ly endear­ing – we all thought he was so cute.”

Fei Zai is a local celebri­ty – a par­tic­u­lar­ly well-loved cat in a shop­ping area teem­ing with them, where most of the longer-run­ning shops are front­ed by their own feline guardians. ​“He is basi­cal­ly the king of the area,” she says. ​“He’s very socia­ble, he likes to patrol around the area. It’s not a busy street in terms of car traf­fic, so he loves to walk around and was not involved in any car accidents.”

Inspired by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­cel Heijnen’s ground­break­ing series Shop Cats of Hong Kong and Insta­gram accounts includ­ing Bode­ga Cats of New York, Eri­ca began tak­ing pic­tures of Fei Zai and oth­er cats in the area, post­ing them to the Insta­gram account she cre­at­ed, She­ung Wan Cats. On her feed, which also fea­tures shop cats from the near­by Sai Ying Pun, there’s gin­ger tab­bies lying on coun­ters, kit­tens peer­ing round door­ways, and tab­bies watch­ing over dried squid and eels. ​“She­ung Wan is one of the old­est areas in Hong Kong, there have been lots of Chi­nese mer­chants there since the 19^th cen­tu­ry,” Eri­ca says. ​“It’s where mer­chants trade all sorts of things, like dried seafood or Chi­nese herbal medicines.”

In recent years, as the Cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict has begun to sprawl out to She­ung Wan, new arti­san cof­fee shops and gleam­ing food joints have popped up in the area, but minus the cats. Eri­ca points to health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions as to why cats are the pre­serve of more tra­di­tion­al shops, but his­tor­i­cal­ly there has been good rea­son for shop own­ers to keep them.

“You might think that there are hygiene prob­lems with hav­ing ani­mals in shops, but they real­ly have a func­tion,” she explains. ​“Dried seafood is real­ly attrac­tive to rats, but the dried seafood is actu­al­ly a del­i­ca­cy [in Hong Kong] – they’re very expen­sive. So if rats are all over them, it’s big loss­es for the shops, so the cats come out at night to catch them – one shop own­er found a cat aban­doned on a street in a box, so he took him back to his shop and all the rats disappeared.”

Usu­al­ly shoot­ing pho­tos and videos with her iPhone, Eri­ca has struck up close rela­tion­ships with shop­keep­ers of the area, as well as the dif­fer­ent cats, learn­ing about their unique per­son­al­i­ties and quirks. ​“Over­all, it’s the con­nec­tion that I made with the com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. ​“I’m nor­mal­ly an intro­vert­ed per­son, but now I’ve start­ed get­ting to know some of the shop own­ers, and they will tell me about their cats: ​‘Oh, these days he’s not eat­ing so much, or he’s get­ting a lit­tle thin.’”

But she also found that the account had prac­ti­cal val­ue that went beyond shar­ing warm­ing por­traits of cats. When cat-relat­ed emer­gen­cies have occurred, she has been the most nat­ur­al port of call. ​“Some­times peo­ple send me cats that are miss­ing, or if there are cats wan­der­ing around but look like they belong to a shop, they would take pic­tures and send them to me so I can share them,” Eri­ca says. ​“A few times we found the cats’ own­ers because of the con­nec­tions on the page.

“These are the most valu­able things I’ve gained from the whole expe­ri­ence,” she con­tin­ues. ​“The sense of community.”

Fol­low She­ung Wan Cats on Instagram.

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