Everyone knows there are soothing dogs, so did you know that cats can soothe humans too? Can you share your experience of being soothed by a cat?

You can never conquer a cat.

It will beg for food, and it will walk away if it doesn't suit its appetite. It will pamper itself and scurry away for no apparent reason. The level of intimacy between you depends on its mood, and its moods are completely unpredictable. But overnight, cats have suddenly become the best cure for urban loneliness - according to the 2018 White Paper on China's Pet Industry, the number of cat owners in China reached 22.58 million in 2018, further narrowing the gap with the number of people owning a dog, and young people are more inclined to own cats.

People don't have to look after them all the time, but they can always get comfort from cats. No matter how late it is, no matter how tired you are, as long as you go home, your cat is waiting for you - perhaps this is why more and more people are choosing to keep cats and are obsessed with sucking on them. Hua's love affair with cats began eight years ago, when he, a designer, accidentally adopted a kitten and became obsessed with photographing cats, until "every day when he opens his eyes, he thinks about where to go to photograph cats, and before he goes to bed, he thinks about what kind of cats he photographed, and even in his dreams," he simply quit his job to focus on photographing cats.

Today, he has saved more than 30,000 pictures of cats on his computer hard disk. These "cat pictures" come from more than 20 cities across the country, including Shanghai's alleys, Beijing's hutongs, Hangzhou's West Lake, and Guangzhou's banyan trees - wherever there are cats, there are Huahua's lenses and footprints. "Cats have nothing, why can they give comfort to human beings?" --This is the answer Hua has been trying to find in the process of photographing cats. He said that if he had the chance, he would like to become an orange cat, sleep when he is full and eat when he wakes up. Here's Hua's blurb, along with the cats in his lens - I'm a cat photographer, specializing in cats.I've been taking pictures of cats for six years, one after another, before I officially made this a career in 2018. I've traveled through Shanghai's large and small parks and stores, streets and alleys, and buildings to find those meowing friends that wander or settle on the side of the road - this kind of street-walking kittens are the main subjects of my photography. I love kittens that grow freely in their natural state, and feel that there is more vitality in them.

Some things slowly become habits. For example, when I go to a new and unfamiliar place, I look around for cats first. Cats do need to be 'looked for'. They're a bit like a secret master hiding in the alley, they don't show up at a fixed time, and they're not visible to the public. But there is always a little pattern, such as the roof, the bottom of the car, the corner of the store, and if you are patient enough, you can always wait for the cat to come. It might start with a little furry ear. Very light, very slow. Poking out from behind a wall root, there may be a glimpse of a hasty stare and a quick retraction. Or it might be a hesitant little paw, a fluttering tail. But more often than not, it's a shadow too fast to react, whooshing and flashing into the dim night air. After seeing that "fish thief", I kind of wanted to become a cat - not a pet cat that you keep at home and eat cat food, but a street cat that wanders in the alleys of Shanghai, eats a hundred meals, drinks water from the sidewalks, leaps to the roof of the opposite side of the street when it's happy, and sleeps on the corner when it doesn't want to.... -A street cat. "Scallop Thief" is an ordinary civet-flowered garden cat. The first time I photographed him, he was just a few months old, still a kitten, and I photographed a family of three. It was a cozy and simple photo, with the mama civet cat in the center, her orange cat, Bo, on the left, and on the right, the bandicoot thief that I later photographed.

"Bandfish Thief" family of three

Late in 2017, I returned to that alleyway, in large part with a small desire to see if I could run into the three of them again. If I could, I wanted to document them as they grew up. During the day that day, I saw the civet kitten again. It no longer looked like a little kitten, but it was still recognizable by its brow and eyes as the old buddy I had photographed. They were both cowering on the side of the car underneath, and at the mouth of one cat was a striped bass.

The cat that stole the scallop

Where did the scallop come from? Seeing such a vivid scene, I pressed the shutter before coming up with an answer, leaving the kitten's "evidence of guilt" behind. The next lane of the aunt found the kitten took the fish, funny to this side, the little orange cat immediately darted away, the little civet flower picked up a fish, flew up the wall, a slip away, leaving the aunt stood underneath, laughing, said it, "I knotted stick well! ("It's great!") I was so excited that I took a blind shot, but I only caught half of its body and the fish's tail. Fortunately, I was able to capture the moment it left with the fish in its mouth. This picture of a civet kitten stealing a fish and eating it has since become one of my treasured "cat movies". Every time I see it, I envy its wild and spontaneous energy and want to be a cat myself. Actually, before I started photographing cats, I had no feelings for them. I didn't particularly like them, and I certainly didn't hate them. What really opened the door to my love of cats was a mom cat named Snow White. I named her Snow White because she was all snow white. The first time I saw Snow White was in the winter of 2012, when it was just a stray cat passing by the entrance of the office area of my unit, with dirty fur and bright eyes. I was taking out the garbage when I heard it meowing. Snow White had a big belly at that time and was pregnant with kittens. I found a crispy mooncake, broke it up and put it on the floor. She literally came over and ate the mooncake. I got Snow White a cardboard box and made a nest, hoping she could live in it when it was cold. The magic happened a few days later. Snow White surprisingly brought back two kittens, one covered in pure white like its mother, and the other with a black body and white paws, like a black cat detective. I named the kittens and got a cardboard box, and they were officially housed.

The kittens under Hua's lens

At that time, I was a designer by profession, and from time to time, I would take pictures of humanities or landscapes. After the three kittens settled in, I naturally often turned my lens on them. There were other stray cats in the park, too, and with the Snow White family, my kitten-loving colleagues and I crowdfunded a lot of cat food, enough to feed them for a year. When we feed the kittens, we spread a row of it by the roadside, and the other stray cats would gather to eat it. After you put the cats under the camera, you will really find their different beauty. Different kittens are like different girls, some elegant, some playful. Without realizing it, my camera card was gradually taken over by cat photos, and I took more and more photos of cats. Feeling the joy of photographing cats, I began to focus my camera on the street cats in the alleys of Shanghai. At the beginning, I was completely inexperienced and just walked around casually every day, sometimes I could only photograph a few cats after 20,000 to 30,000 steps. But when I returned home at night and saw the cats' expressions in the photos, I felt that the day's journey had not been in vain.

What's even more rewarding is that I've gotten a lot of recognition for my cat photos. Before, when I updated some pictures on the Internet, most of them were liked by a few friends, and they were not very popular. But once I put a kitten in a flower pot and took a picture of a cat in a flower pot, and when I looked back the next day, there were more than 300 likes. That was a big encouragement to me. I swept the streets even more diligently, and as soon as it was time to leave work, the cat-finding clockwork on my legs was quickly tightened, urging me to photograph cats without stopping for a moment. Gradually, I also discovered the pattern of cats roaming in this city. Some cats are hard to see in the daytime and go out at night; if you go to the same place at different times of the day, you will find different cats; if you take a twig and play with the cats, they are always ready to rise up in the air and make all kinds of disco-like movements; if you carry cat food and catnip with you, most of the cats will become easy to get close to.

Changes are slowly happening to me because of cat photography. I'm a bit of a nerd, and I'm not very good at opening my mouth to strangers. But sometimes, in order to photograph a cat, I have to ask the cat owner's permission, "Auntie, the cat is so cute, can I take a picture of it? The cat owner usually agrees with a smile and calls the cat to look at the camera with him. Cats have become the perfect medium for people to say hello to each other, and many fruit stores and kiosks have different cats, and I've become a regular at those places.

The decision to really prepare for full-time cat photography was not a headlong one. When I first became a designer, I always spent the time I wasn't working looking at great designs and saving fresh material. Design itself made me happy. But since I got into the pit of photographing cats, I seem to be obsessed with photographing cats. After I adopted Snow White, I always wanted to work a little longer and spend a little more time with them because she lived in the flat. Later, when I brought the cat home, I was anxious to go home early for fear that they would wait too long at home. When I went out to photograph cats, many cats that like to be close to people would approach me, and I could reach out and touch their little heads - so there was one more kind of subject to photograph, head-touching. I also bought a special wide-angle lens to take pictures of these clingy kittens. After spending a lot of time with people, cats carry a human scent with them. Cats everywhere have very different styles. Most of the stray cats in parks are timid, and the boss cats in stores are dominant. In Shanghai, the houses in the alley are high, and the cats are leisurely and like to stay on the street; in Beijing, the cottages in the hutongs are short, and the cats are chivalrous and love to fly; in Guangzhou, the cats are very much alive, and they look left and right when they walk through the vegetable market, and they know the most about romance.

Cats in bookstores

Most of the time, people's expectations of cats are often based on their own imaginations. The kittens at Beijing's Guangji Temple, for example, are shrouded in Buddha's nature because they have lived there for so long. They are very different from the anxious worshippers, always basking in their own sunshine. Some of them jumped up to the Buddha's niche, huffing and puffing, while others stretched out in the lobby, lazily enjoying themselves. Once, I witnessed a kitten, "saluting the Buddha" together with the people kneeling in the main hall. The monks practicing next to it thought it was very spiritual, "look look, it also kowtows to the Buddha", but in reality, the cat was just lazily stretching a comfortable waist. Whether or not it was actually worshipping Buddha, I think cats are closer to Buddha than people. They always eat when it's time to eat, drink when it's time to drink, sleep when it's time to sleep, and run when it's time to run, whereas humans want too many things in their hearts to be as focused and enjoyable as cats.

The cat in the temple

In October 2017, I took a six-month leave of absence without pay, and began to spend all my time photographing cats, and every day when I opened my eyes, I thought about where I was going to photograph cats, and before I went to bed I thought about what kind of cats I had photographed, and even in my dreams I was a cat. The decision to quit my job became natural, I learned from cats and went to do what I really like. After really devoting my energy completely to photographing cats, my knowledge of cats gradually enriched. It turns out that there are so many romantic names for just the common Chinese field cat. A white cat with a bit of black on its back is called a General Hanging Seal; a black cat with a bit of white on its tail is called an Ink Jade Dropping Pearl; a black cat with white hooves is a Snow Seeking Plum; and if even its stomach is white, it is a Dark Cloud Covering Snow. In addition to categorizing cats by coat color, I also tagged them with a variety of different labels. Temple cats, college cats, office cats, whether they have one eye or different pupils, whether they are a loving family or a lone cat. Over the years, I accumulated more than 20,000 cat photos, and just sitting in my office sorting and retouching them all could often keep me busy for an entire day.

Now, it's too easy to have a completely negative day. The price of pork has gone up, the price of houses has gone down, celebrities are cheating on each other, and news of violence pops up on your cell phone. Look at your bank card balance and wonder what you're working for. Everyone is living a life of mourning, and the giant beast of life is weighing everyone down. However, when I walked into a lane full of cats, the rhythm of time seemed to suddenly slow down. The people and cats in the alley seemed to be unaffected by the hustle and bustle of the world outside, people drinking tea, cats basking in the sun, everything unhurried, as if life should be the way it was. My whole body would relax at once. I think this is the reason why more and more people have cats in recent years. In the last few years, I obviously feel that the IP of cats has become hot. The most intuitive is the various movies and TV dramas, you can hardly not find a close-up of a cat in a commercial movie anymore. Turning Mountains, Romancing the Dead, The Legend of the Demon Cat, directed by Chen Kaige, features a black cat. As for those cat images in Weibo, such as White Tea and My King, and Lord Shortcake from Nikkei, they have captured the hearts of many people. My Weibo followers are also growing, and I think I'm probably lucky to have chosen just the right spot in an era when jerking off cats is prevalent.

In the process of photographing cats, touching often comes from inadvertently. The summer before last, a reporter wanted to interview me and accompanied me to sweep the streets for cats. A group of chefs and waiters were eating after the meal time, and a three-flowered cat from the store jumped onto a stool and stretched its neck along with them. The lady in the white chef's hat saw it and handed it a piece of meat with a smile, and I was able to capture it as it lowered its head and prepared to eat. This kind of shot can be encountered but can not be sought, many times, many times to wait and disappointment, in exchange for a good luck. Sometimes, when I'm carrying three cameras full of cat food and catnip, I can't get a good picture even after half a day's walk, but then I'll turn the next corner and often get a surprise. There are many other photos of people and cats living in harmony like this. But there are times when I come across cats that have been caught in the city. Once when I was looking for a cat in an alley, an aunt looked at the camera in my hand warily and asked me what I was trying to do. She had been feeding cats in the alley for years and had encountered a number of cat traders who took photos of the stampede.

She took me for one of their own kind, and it took me half a day of explaining to gain trust. Later, Auntie told me that she had once lost a few kittens and found them missing when she was feeding them. She then followed those people who came to take pictures all the way to their place to argue, and eventually, surprisingly, she did bring back the kittens she used to feed. To her, those kittens were like her children. I've also actually seen cats in cages, and when I went back a few days later, some people said they had been eaten. In some cities, people really go and eat the cats. After that I developed another habit of never eating kebabs at street stalls again, because I didn't know if it was another unfortunate cat that had been caught. I started to be careful to hide information about the location of the cats, usually not telling strangers where they came from, and also tried to post some pictures and ask people in the neighborhood to adopt and feed them. After photographing so many cats, it was more comforting to be able to do something slightly for them. Cats have nothing, so why can they give comfort to humans? Sometimes this question pops into my head. Every cat picture I send out attracts a large wave of fans to gather and suck on the clouds. Some people leave a message saying that after a busy day, they are so tired that they are exhausted, and when they see the look in the cat's eyes, they instantly come back to life. There are also people who have just been scolded by their bosses and feel hopeless, but are cured by the cats I shot.

It has been scientifically proven that cats control humans by their adorable head-to-body ratio, which can stir up human motherhood. Others say that cats are like lovers, best able to satisfy one's desire for conquest. But I think that cats are more like a small spiritual refuge, which can allow repressed modern people to take a breather inside, and therefore, more and more human beings have also become willing pooper scoopers. Now I have two kittens at home, both of which are Chinese field cats that I adopted. The big cat is called Bomb, and he's not close to me at all, but I often have to watch out for him scratching me. The younger one, Sanhua, is much softer, a chatterbox who loves to purr, and loves to provoke Bomb to play. In the last few years, I've been out shooting cats all year round, and I've long since entrusted both of them to my mom and dad's care. Sometimes when I come home, Bomb doesn't run out to greet me, but just pokes his head like a stranger and gives me a look to show that he knows I'm home. But when it comes to my dad, he's always extra clingy and affectionate. Bomb sometimes hunts. He could catch many geckos in a summer and carry them to the bathroom to get credit from my mom. My mom would sweep the geckos away and he would jump up and down looking for the trophy. Sometimes when my dad was sitting at home watching TV, Bomb would leap up, sit on his lap, and purr himself to sleep.

"Bomb" in the Hana family

With Bomb and Little Sansha by his side, there were many heartwarming moments in my dad and mom's life. Every time I came home, my mom would tell me that Bomb could open the door by himself, that Bomb had brought a gecko into the house, that Bomb refused to go to sleep at night, and that he had to turn on the electric mattress before he could go into the nest. ...... I was fixing the cat videos that I had filmed outside, and Bomb was probing the outside of my house, and he knew that someone was coming home, and that the door of the room, which was always locked, could be opened again. The door to this room is always locked and can be opened again. We, as a family, have long since gotten used to having cats around. They have just the right amount of distance; when you ignore it, it will tease you. When you want to hug it, it never gives hugs easily. If I had to choose, I'd still want to be a cat -

Just be an orange cat, because - fat.