Grandma Guo, a retiree who spends every penny of her pension giving care to stray animals, told her personal stories to COC Members last Sunday at the animal shelter she and other volunteers founded in two rented bunglows by the foot of Mountain Lao in west LaoShan District’s Kutao Village.

For 27 years, Grandma Guo has been taking care of stray animals around her neighborhood ever since she rescued a stranded kitty on her way to work. Now, she spends her daytime in the animal shelter where a hundred or so cats and dogs are raised and feeds stray cats at over 20 feeding spots in downtown Qingdao at night.

“I could only get about 3 hours of sleep every day because I cannot go to bed if any of my cats are hungry. They are like my own children, and I have not missed a single day feeding them.” she said.

At the age of 73, she’d had three experiences of bone broken in recent years on her way to the feeding spots which are often located on rugged grounds.

“I am not the only giving love to the animals. Now there are about 60 to 70 volunteers feeding stray cats and dogs across Qingdao on a daily basis just like me. And there are even more who join us at the weekends and holiday”

Limited by funding, she encourages animal lovers to adopt animals from the shelter. However, she hopes the adopters don’t live too far away as she and the volunteers must visit them to see if the animals live well off at their new homes.

Compared to the efforts they have made to protect these animals, fighting against animal killers is a more painstaking and even excruciating cause for these volunteers.

Apart from patrolling regularly till late night against poachers who hunt animals and sell them to restaurants in Guangdong Province where people eat cats as a tradition, they have to make payments to a local villainous family who feed on poor kitties as well.

The Yu family living on Renmin Road in north Qingdao often forces the volunteers to buy animals on high prices, otherwise they would use extremely cruel means such as eyes poking and disemboweling, to make the volunteers give in.

“The son holds a certificate of mental illness so the cop cannot do anything to punish his evil behavior whereas his father is an ex-convict mastering all his plans for the son to carry out.”

“Despite the money we pay, they stick to the habit of eating cats every now and then even we offered to buy pork, beef or mutton for them on a daily basis, ” she added.

With the winter drawing in, Grandma is anxious about the coal to be burned for heat this year. The price for coal is higher this year and she hopes for donors and volunteers to help out for the poor animals.

“You could bring some cat or dog food to the shelter or simply come here to help us cleaning up the house, every piece of efforts will be appreciated,” she said.