We've been in touch, often see her send circles of friends, talk to cats, today is your birthday, I miss you again, what happened today, I miss you so much. It's been a year and she's still posting her cat in the circle of friends. ”
Text | Xu Qing
Edit | Golden turn
Operational | Linta
This generation of young people seems to prefer to establish a relationship with pets that is both intimate and boundary-bounded, but no relationship is completely stable, and pets are sometimes lost like love.
Data show that an average of 1/3 of pets are lost during their lifetime, with less than 2% of cats and 15% to 20% of dogs eventually being returned to their owners.
Lost pets give birth to a new industry: In February, a blogger tweeted about his special experience with his roommate, whose cat opened the door himself, slipped out of the house and disappeared. They found a pet detective and retrieved the cat by analyzing footprints, cat hair, and other marks. This weibo has been retweeted more than 30,000 times, and the profession of pet detective is also known to more people.
We found the pet detective in this Weibo, in the three years of entering the industry, he has found hundreds of pets, but also collected hundreds of people and pet stories, in those stories about loss and search, you can glimpse the emotions of young people and pets, as well as their real life situation.
Here's what he had to say:
1
My name is Zhang Zhanfei, I am 25 years old and I am a professional pet seeker.
You can easily recognize me in the crowd, not by looks, but by smell. I look for lost pets every day all over the country, tracking the traces they left behind, so there is a smell of urine on the body all year round, it is difficult to dissipate, bathing and changing clothes does not work, sometimes the list is too dense, do not care about washing, it will be more serious.
Do this line for more than two years, I found hundreds of pets, modern society, willing to spend money to find more and more people to find pets, before may be the majority of middle-aged people, they have a certain economic strength, will be in order to find cats to find dogs to spend money - pet hunting prices are not cheap, basically between 2000-8000 yuan, there are some can be tens of thousands, but now young people more, after 80, 90, there are also 00.
Later I found out that younger people, even college students, would come to me. From what I've observed, most of them are young people working in the city, living alone, or sharing a room with boyfriend and girlfriend. Young people seem to be more and more socially afraid, not very good at dealing with people, but have a deep affection for cats and dogs.
Many young people and their parents do not have a good relationship, each other is very stiff, sometimes they dare not tell their parents that their pets are lost, and need to spend so much money to find, parents can not understand this matter, will say "cat lost what is there to worry about", so they lie to their parents, saying that I am their friend, or separate parents, and then let me go into the house to find.
I don't know why, after almost three years of being a pet seeker, I found that there are more people who lose cats than dogs. Cats are lost, mostly out of curiosity and want to go out and have a look. Sometimes they also jump off the building because it is short-sighted, the things they see are parallel, whether it is the 9th floor or the 20th floor, it is possible to jump down, so there will be a lot of cats jumping off the building. It's spring, and it's also the peak season for cats, because cats are in heat at this time and are easy to run away.
Most people lose earth cats, but there are not many breeds of cats. Earth cats are the most difficult to find, they are not afraid of dirty, like dark and quiet places, sewers, elevator shafts can be drilled. They also like to drill under the car, which is cool and cool in summer, can block the wind in winter, and the engine is not cool enough to keep warm.
▲ Lost cats often hide in sewers and other pipes. Photo / Sina Weibo @Arrow Factory Video
Cats are also more likely to find it, because they can stay in places for a long time, do not eat or drink, and have strong vitality. I once found a cat, hiding in someone else's toilet, drinking water from the toilet, and after 22 days, I was hungry and thin when I was found, but I was still alive.
As long as the cat is lost for no more than a month, it is actually fine. The most feared is to jump off the building, cats are not as balanced as ordinary people think, how high can not fall to death, this is a misunderstanding, if too high, they will also fracture, or even die.
2
In 2019, when I was 23 years old, I came to Shanghai to look for a job and found a job on the Internet. At that time, there were not many pet-seeking companies in Shanghai, these companies recruited people to find pets full-time, attendance a day can earn five or six hundred, earn seven or eight thousand per month is not a problem, a little more can have ten or twenty thousand yuan, for me at that time, really attractive, so I wanted to try. I didn't expect to succeed in the interview once, because I was 182cm tall, physically strong, and my eyesight was good, which were all advantages for the pet seeker.
Pet hunting is a new industry, and there is basically no regulation, so there will be some chaos. For example, if the cat owner is willing to pay for the air ticket, there will be a boss who collects the money, saying that the team members took the plane to go over, but in fact, they took the train. There are also some people who are not easy to find, run to sleep several kilometers away, stay up for a long time, anyway, you have done this point, and if you can't find the deposit, you won't return it.
After working for two years, I came out to open a studio by myself, stipulating that employees must let the cat owner follow out to find, the first let them rest assured, the second to find the cat is in need of support, some cats we can't catch, only the owner can make the cat let down his guard.
Usually after receiving a single request, the cat owner will tell me about the cat's situation, what name, breed, how bold, how habits, as well as how many floors the family lives, what is the surrounding situation. If there is an access control in the building and the windows in the corridor are still closed, there is a high probability that the cat is still in the building. Cats will leave footprints when they walk, and the hair will fall off as they go, so the most important thing is to identify the footprints, cat hair, and feces. Some feces will leave cat hair on it, which can be pulled out and looked at.
Every time I go to work, the equipment I bring is a flashlight, a cat catching net, a cat catcher, and I will take a flashlight to look at every floor and every corner, and the fine dust and traces on the ground will not be spared. If you don't find it, keep looking, keep looking, and each corridor must be inspected at least once or twice, sometimes three times.
I have never brought some high-tech equipment, unless the customer does not understand, we will bring it. Really go to find a cat, do not use high technology, thermal imaging equipment at night to see things are particularly blurry, damage to the eyes, flashlight penetration is much stronger than it. The life detector is more chicken ribs, its use distance is very limited, the pipeline detector may be used more, sometimes the cat is stuck in a slit, this is equivalent to an endoscope.
Looking for cats is a physical work, climbing high, drilling holes, are common things, often bumping into the head, hands are scratched by cats, but also to be a driver, stay up late on business trips, from time to time at four o'clock in the morning is still looking for cats, once in order to find a cat, I just drove six or seven hundred kilometers, WeChat sports have more than 40,000 steps.
▲ The wound on Zhang Zhanfei's hand that was scratched by a cat. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
Doing this line, but also especially need patience, do not be impatient, must be stable, the cat can not chase, you start to chase, the cat will run. Once I found the cat, it was just under the chassis of the car, because it was a block around, there was an aunt who had been arguing, thinking we were catching her cat, the cat was frightened and ran to a parking lot, we looked in the parking lot row by row, watched all day, and finally caught the cat.
After finding a pet, I usually get dirty, and with the smell, walking on the road, people will stare at me with a suspicious look. I was also thought of as a thief because I always held a flashlight and looked sneaky.
Once I knelt outside a garage and looked for a cat through the slit underneath, only to have the owner of the garage come over with a drunken friend and want to beat me, suspecting me of stealing his belongings. I said have you ever seen stealing something at ten o'clock in the morning? The cat thrower came out to explain, they still did not forgive, they kept scolding me, this kind of thing often happens, may be my profession will inevitably bring about misunderstandings.
▲ Photo / Sina Weibo @First Glance Video
3
The first order I received after working as a professional pet seeker was to go to the outskirts of Shanghai with the boss of the company at that time to find a cat. The young man who lost the cat was "Shanghai Drift", and after graduating from graduate school, he bought a car and a house in Shanghai on his own. The folded ear beauty he raised was short, especially anxious, the cat was raised with his girlfriend before, and then the girlfriend left Shanghai, the cat became a thought, when he thought of his girlfriend, he could watch the cat, and he held the cat to sleep every day.
He went to the neighbor's big brother's house and asked him, who told him that the cat had indeed been to his house, but then ran away. According to my understanding of the temperament of cats, it is impossible to run out too far, and it is estimated that it is still at the neighbor's big brother's house. I sat with my neighbor's big brother and kept chatting and grinding for a long time. I said brother, can you let me go in and look for it again? This cat is a cat with folded ears, there is a genetic disease, just to see a doctor spent more than 10,000, but also has been taking medicine, I am afraid it will die, but also a small life, found I will give you a thank you fee.
He said yes, you go in and look for it, most likely in the utility room. When I went in, I saw that the house was full of cat footprints, and it wasn't long before I saw the cat in a round table and a corner of a wall. The young man who lost the cat was very excited and kept saying to me: "Brother thank you, brother thank you, you helped me find a memory of me and my girlfriend in Shanghai." ”
Later, my boss and I speculated that the neighbor's big brother was most likely lying, and he might want to keep the cat, but I told him that the cat was sick, which made him change his mind a little.
After the cat is lost, it is carried into the house by others, which is the hardest to find. You go knock on the door of the first house and open it for you, the second one doesn't open the door, it's in vain, and the cat may have gone to the third house. It is very difficult to find people in a community, let alone a cat, so finding a cat requires understanding some people's sophistication and understanding people's psychology.
Last year I also encountered a case, the cat owner lives on the fifth floor, I found the footprints of the cat on the third floor and a lot of cat hair, the cat's footprints on the opposite side of a child's footprints, I judged that the cat must have been carried away by the family.
Before I came, the cat owner also knocked on the door on the third floor, and the other party said that he did not see it. Since you have asked it once, and then ask it a second time, the other party will not admit it. I thought of a way to get the cat owner to post a notice to find the cat, and the bounty was written for 2,000 yuan. A dozen days later, a man who lived more than ten kilometers away sent the cat back. More than ten kilometers, how can the range of cats be so large? What the truth is like, you can imagine.
▲ Posting pet hunting notices can also bring some opportunities to find pets. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
4
Having been on this line for a long time, I've seen too many tears, excitement, sadness, or more mixed emotions.
Last year, I was tasked with going to an office park in Shanghai to find a pastoral cat, the owner of the cat is a post-90s, but also the CEO of a game startup, his cat has been raised for 13 years, since he came to the park has been semi-scattered in the office, eating and drinking Lasa are here, like a mascot.
The last thing I found was the cat's body. The cat jumped from the upper floor, although it was the third floor, but the office park building was taller than the average residential building, and one floor was equivalent to five or six floors. It was winter, the blood from the cat's nose had solidified, and I saw the CEO who was in charge of a company look sad, tears kept rolling in his eyes, and he couldn't cry when he wanted to. His girlfriend was also very surprised and asked him: "Are you crying?" "There is a bamboo forest behind the company, and the CEO thinks that the office area where the cat used to live is too noisy, and he wants to find a quiet place for him, so he is buried in the bamboo forest."
I also received a list from a twenty-year-old girl in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, who said her little black cat had run out of the corridor. When she saw us, her eyes were swollen and her dark circles were particularly heavy, and her parents stopped working to accompany her for two days and two nights, but they didn't find them. Her family lives on the 9th floor, the total height of the building is more than 20 floors, I said there must be hope to find, to go to the scene to investigate, as a result I looked around the corridor, did not find a cat footprint. I said you guys haven't cleaned this? Even if someone had cleaned it, there should have been some traces, but nothing.
Later I went into her house to check it out, and found that the balcony was fenced and there was no shelter, and over there, I found cat hair, so I guessed that the cat probably jumped down as well. Go downstairs to take a look, sure enough, I saw the cat on a lawn, touched it, the body was very hard, it was dead, and from the traces of the scene, the cat walked two or three meters before it fell.
When I first met the customer, she bought us hot coffee and said, "You may need to stay up late, please try your best to help me find it", when you find it, the coffee is not cold, it is only ten minutes. I didn't tell her at the first time, but called her father first: "The cat is gone, do you need to tell the girl?" ”
Her father later told me that her daughter had been studying abroad, returned to China for a few years, had a very withdrawn personality, it was difficult to communicate with people, this cat was a stray cat she adopted, because she had to go to the pet store to give injections to kittens, buy cat food and various pet supplies, she had to deal with people, come and go, the whole person was also cheerful, not so afraid of contact with people, she also made an appointment with the doctor, and then went to sterilize the kittens in a week.
When looking for a cat upstairs, the little girl said to me: "Someone said that my cat was not good-looking, and I glared at him fiercely." The tone was particularly simple, "Although it is not a breed cat, it is all mine." ”
▲ Pets are the spiritual pillar of many young people. Photo / Visual China
Her dad kept sighing, "What about this?" I said, "According to your girl's personality, if she doesn't find it, she will keep looking for it, and she won't give up." Finally I said to the little girl, "The kitten is gone, it is back to the cat star to live happily, can you understand this?" ”
On the phone she cried and asked where the cat was, wanting to see the cat one last time. When she saw the cat, she fell straight to her knees and hugged my leg and cried. She used to like to watch "Step by Step", so the name of the cat was called Step by Step, and she cried while shouting "Step by Step", it was more than one o'clock in the morning, and the whole community could hear her crying.
There is also a very impressive story, I took a day and a night train to Guangxi to find a cat for a girl in Liuzhou. The girl is a fitness instructor, twenty-four or five years old, she lives on the third floor, one day accidentally opened the door, the tanuki cat sneaked out.
I looked at each floor, and judging from the footprints left by the cat, it later went to the fifth floor, where the smell of blood was extremely heavy, and there were pieces of blood on the windows and on the white walls. When I looked, the window of the family's kitchen on the fifth floor was connected to the corridor, and there was cat hair stuck on it, and I could basically determine that it was related to the family.
When asked, the hostess said, "It's none of my business, I have rhinitis, I can't smell cat hair." "It turned out that the hostess was allergic to cat hair, saw a cat lying on the window, called the property people to drive the cat away, the property was heavy, beat the cat to death, and then the security guard also admitted to me, the cat's body was thrown away by him."
After knowing this, the cat owner almost had to fight with the hostess and the security guard. She left home to work alone in Liuzhou, although she had a boyfriend, but did not live together, only the cat has been with her, from her hometown to various places, the cat followed her for 9 years. After finding the cat lost, she posted a lot of cat hunting notices, someone told her that she had seen it in a barbecue restaurant three kilometers away, and she went there to guard for a night, from 9 pm to 7 o'clock in the morning, did not wait, the yin and yang were wrong, the cat was killed that night.
In the past few days of looking for the cat, she didn't even go to class, originally when she saw me, she was still painting makeup, very capable feeling, but when she saw the blood left by the cat, she didn't get anything on her face, and the whole person collapsed, crying out of breath, as if she was going to faint. The cat was too important to her to find it, and there was simply no way she could continue living.
No way, after I discussed with her boyfriend, I made up a white lie, because she didn't see the cat's body, and told her that the cat was not necessarily gone, but was seriously injured, thrown out, and woke up after it, didn't know where it was still alive, could buy a cat catcher cage, if not caught in a week, you can give up, which is to leave her a little hope.
She was so devastated that it didn't work to comfort her, but because I found the cat's blood, she believed me. I said, you have to live your own life well before your cat can have hope. Later, I talked to her a lot on WeChat, and she slowly accepted the facts. We have been in touch, often see her send circles of friends, talk to cats, today is your birthday, I miss you again, what happened today, I miss you so much. It's been a year and she's still posting her cat in the circle of friends.
▲ Photo / Screenshot of "The Diary of a Traveling Cat"
5
I also own a cat and live in Shanghai with my girlfriend. Before coming to Shanghai, my experience is still quite rich, when I was 15 years old, I came out to work, the first thing I did was the service industry, drifting in Beijing north, I also went to Tianjin, Haifei silk production line, I screwed the bottle cap for half a month, and then in a KTV as a doorman, tube to eat and live, more than 3,000 yuan a month. At that time I went to deliver wine, the guest got drunk, beat me up, I was not angry, said: "What's wrong, brother?" "If it was in my hometown, I would definitely fight with him, but in the service industry, we must have a sense of service, and the customer is God, which is also the concept instilled in me by the leaders at that time."
Later, I went to Ningbo, stood guard in a very famous global center, and also went to the construction site in Nantong to work, making ceiling ceilings and screwing for more than a month. One day, a very thick copper wire fell from the ceiling and smashed a hole in my hard hat, and I was afraid and stopped drying. I also worked as a waiter and real estate agent in the catering industry, but I only worked for more than a month, learned a little bit of skin and left.
Those years because I was too young to know what I was going to do, and then I met my girlfriend, I had a life goal, she has been helping me sort out my life plan, soft and hard bubbles, let me really do things, but also because later we raised a Muppet cat called Bean Flower, I thought of doing things well, making money to raise it. In my circle of friends, there are more bean blossoms than girlfriends, and I think that bean blossoms are my family and a part of our family.
Bean Blossom likes to bark, always talks to people, is very clingy, everyone licks, and when she sleeps, she will burrow into my bed and lick my heels. When I first raised bean blossoms, bean blossoms vomited a hairball, my girlfriend thought it was sick, crying like a dog, I was also sad, quickly took it to the hospital to see, the doctor said, spitting hair ball is normal, we are both relieved.
Just like me, many people actually keep pets for companionship, and as long as they are alive and not lost, they will always accompany you. Don't people say that friends will leave you and boyfriends/girlfriends may leave you, but pets won't.
My girlfriend used to do UI design, encountered some unpleasant things or any pressure at work, maybe she didn't tell her parents, afraid that they would worry, but she would tell Douhua. Bean Blossom also can't understand, it will only meow, but how to say it, pick it up and "suck" it, it is really quite decompressing. Since I got a cat, I also feel that my happiness in life has become higher.
But this kind of emotion, not naturally established at the beginning, when I was a child in the countryside, cats and dogs are free-range, they can not be counted as pets, if lost, then lost, naturally accept this matter. But after doing the work of pet hunting, and after I actually got a pet myself, I learned about the deep emotional connection between people and cats, and between people and dogs. Once you raise a small animal from small to large, you will feel that it is your family, and over time, there is a bond between people and animals.
I really like this job, although tired, but I don't like to clock in every day, do this line more freely, and do it for a long time will find that although it is still a service industry, it is still much easier to get along with small animals than with people.
▲ The pennant given to Zhang Zhanfei by the customer. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee