A Chengdu resident who claimed to be a “cat lover” has been exposed as the exact opposite. It turns out, instead of taking care of stray cats, he was in fact slaughtering them and selling them as “rabbit meat.”



Around the neighborhood, Huang Pingfu was known as a friend to felines. Locals would bring him strays, and he used a WeChat group to advertise himself as an altruistic cat adopter. At his home, he kept some of the more expensive breeds at pets. But at night, he would load most of the strays into his vehicle and drive to a shady slaughterhouse in the countryside, Chengdu Business Daily reports.



Huang told an undercover reporter that he probably slaughtered around 100 cats a day, making over 3,000 yuan a night for his trouble. In Chengdu, the sale of cat meat is prohibited, so Huang was forced to sell to markets and restaurants outside the city, while also using some deceptive marketing, mostly advertising the meat as “rabbit meat.” He explained that cat and rabbit mostly take the same, and when the meat is ground up, no one can tell the difference.


To meet the high-demand from restaurants looking to cut costs by buying inexpensive mystery meat, Huang not only snatched up strays from the street, but hired people to steal pets.



After Huang’s double life was exposed by a local animal rights’ organization, police stepped in and shut down the underground slaughterhouse. Freeing the cats stored inside. Grisly images from the slaughterhouse have since been posted online, horrifying Chinese netizens.



Huang has been put into police custody, but it’s unclear what will happen to him. China doesn’t have any laws against torturing animals. It’s entirely possible he will be let go with a slap on the wrist.
[Images via Chengdu Business Daily]