An abandoned dog waits for a new owner. Photo: CFP

It is 5 am and early riser 63-year-old He Yukuan is cleaning her house. This takes a major effort every day. In her small apartment near Liziyuan Station on metro Line 11 He and her son reside - along with 20 cats and five dogs.

Some of the animals sleep on a wooden couch, some are sitting on the floor, some are hiding behind wardrobes. The home has the unmistakable smell of animal excrement even though she tries to keep it clean and tidy.

"The people upstairs often come here and complain about the smell," He admitted.

Her animals are strays and her life is largely taken up with stray animals. Every day after she finishes two hours of house cleaning she goes out to feed the stray cats and dogs in the nearby communities. She hasn't had a holiday outside Shanghai for years. "Nobody would look after the animals if I left home."

A costly pastime

The strays outside and at home cost He not only time but money. She estimates she spends some 1,500 yuan ($241.65) a month on animals - more than half her monthly pension. Daily she steams a big pot of rice with fish and chicken livers for the cats and dogs. When the Global Times visited her lunch was a simple plate of vegetables and tofu.

"Many say I am a fool but I don't care." She has been a "fool" for nearly 20 years now. The first stray animal she adopted was a white and yellow cat she found in 1995. She took the little cat home and it made her very happy. From then on, He began taking in hungry or injured stray animals.

Over the years she has adopted more than 80 cats and dogs, feeding them, cleaning them - she even learned how to administer vaccinations. If the animals are sick or injured she takes them to veterinarian clinics or calls a veterinarian in.

But though the stray cats and dogs have brought her happiness and a sense of achievement, there are many problems involved in this charitable mission.

Bites and scratches are part of her life. Like the time she was trying to rescue a little tabby cat stranded on a flyover and mewing for hours. She placed some food in front of the little animal but instead of eating it gratefully it suddenly leapt up and bit her savagely on the hand.

One of the dogs she keeps at home is a small mustard-colored crossbred called Beibei. It was tied to the sofa and although He loves it the dog does not like everyone else. It has bitten her son twice and, in 2008, when builders were rebuilding her backyard, it bit a worker which meant she had to pay the man a tidy sum in compensation. "A tetanus injection can cost 900 yuan," she said.

Last year He faced a crisis. Her husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and was taken to hospital. She described him as a kind man who helped her care for the strays. But as he lay stricken with the disease in hospital, He and his family spent most of their savings on his treatment. And He no longer had time to look after her pets.

She contacted some of the city's animal protection organizations to ask for help but to her surprise they all rejected her requests for assistance. "They wanted to charge me for looking after my cats and dogs - 300 yuan to look after a cat for a month, and 400 yuan for a dog," she said. "I couldn't afford that. I had to save money for my husband."

Fortunately one of her cat-lover friends agreed to look after He's 10 cats, asking her for just 200 yuan a month. She then had to send her two favorite dogs, Beibei and Gougou to private kennels for five months and fed the others herself, snatching time from her husband's bedside and hospital to journey home and attend to them.

Her family argued with her and criticized her over this decision but she felt she had no choice even though it made her feel guilty. "I had adopted these animals and I didn't want to abandon them."

He Yukuan looks after some of her cats. Photo: Huang Lanlan/GT

Seeking help

During the hard times, and after her husband passed away, He thought of seeking help on the popular microblogging website Weibo - although she had no computer skills. But He, with her simple middle school education, soon worked out how to use Weibo and began posting stories about her strays and her problems in caring for them.

LifeYoYo was one of the animal protection groups that offered practical assistance although rather than adopting and feeding stray cats and dogs, this nonprofit intermediary agency connects stray animal rescue organizations with people who want to adopt pets.

"When there is a group looking for a new home for a stray cat it has saved, and there is someone wanting to adopt a stray cat as a pet, they come to LifeYoYo to meet each other," Yin Yawei, LifeYoYo director, told the Global Times.

Established in April 2012, LifeYoYo started China's first stray animal adoption website pet.lifeyoyo.com one month later. Thirteen leading animal rescue organizations in Shanghai regularly give it information about the cats and dogs they have saved, and LifeYoYo posts these details including a photo of the animal and its age, gender, strain and physical condition.

The group does not charge for its services. "And if I found a group was charging people for adopting a stray cat or dog, I would not use its details again," Yin said.

According to its website, 139 stray cats and dogs have been registered at LifeYoYo and 59 of these have been successfully adopted. Since last November, the group holds a monthly animal adoption day for the rescue organizations and adopters where 40 or so dogs and cats are showcased in the hope they will find new owners. At the last adoption day on Sunday six dogs and a cat found new homes.

LifeYoYo holds its adoption days at a pet store in Hongkou district. The store opened in May 2013 and the owner, 30-year-old Ruan Xiaojing, explained to the Global Times that all of the cats and dogs there were strays she and friends had rescued.

She first rescued a dog which had been injured in a road accident in Feihong Road in 2011. But she then began finding other animals and decided the best solution would be to open a store. Today the 100-square-meter store is home to nearly 30 dogs and 10 cats who all greet visitors with a range of welcoming barks, yelps, meows and whines.

Ruan Xiaojing cuddles one of her favorite dogs sadly blinded in one eye in a savage attack. Photo: Huang Lanlan/GT

Guarantees sought

Most of the cats and dogs at Ruan's store can be adopted at LifeYoYo's adoption days. Ruan and Yin insist that potential adopters guarantee that their animals will be spayed or neutered within a week. "We also require new dog owners to register their animals with public security departments within a fortnight," Yin said. City regulations mean dogs in Shanghai have to be registered and vaccinated every year.

Ruan and Yin also have to consider whether the adopters can afford the pets they choose. Ruan said earlier this year a beautiful white Bichon Frise dog was brought back to her shop suffering from a skin complaint. "The owner didn't want to take it to pet shops to be treated properly because that would cost him 300 yuan a month."

When Yin talked about He, the woman with 20 cats and five dogs, she did not praise her. Yin felt, in fact, the elderly woman was not the right person to be caring for so many stray cats and dogs. "She has financial and family problems and looking after all those animals will wear her out," she said. "The conditions are not good for the animals either."

LifeYoYo tried to help her last year when He was busy caring for her husband but none of the photographs it posted of her cats and dogs attracted new owners.

Looking after stray animals can be a thankless task in Shanghai. Once five volunteers were helping run LifeYoYo but nowadays Yin is the only one working for the nonprofit group. "I spend lots of time and energy updating the website and organizing activities like the adoption days but I can't make any money this way," she told the Global Times.

And Ruan's pet store is not a financially viable concern either. She can make some money from looking after pet dogs when their owners go away but she only charges 30 yuan a day for this. The cost of renting the shop and looking after the animals comes to more than 10,000 yuan per month.

But both believe their work with animals is important and worth the trouble. "It's not difficult to imagine how miserable the lives of these strays would be if people didn't help them," said Ruan, cuddling a small white dog. When she rescued this dog it was pregnant and had been savagely beaten and lost an eye in an attack.

Last Thursday, Yin, Ruan and Lu Yunfeng, who works at the store, visited an animal protection center in Jiangsu Province. The center was built and managed by monks from the nearby temple and others. There they helped vaccinate and feed some 230 dogs which had been recently rescued from the Yulin dog meat festival which is held every year in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and where thousands of dogs are captured and killed for eating.

Lives bought

"Dog lovers rescued these animals apparently by paying local dog dealers 30 or 40 yuan per kilogram," Lu told the Global Times. These lucky dogs will stay at the center until someone adopts them.

But these animal lovers would like the government to assist their cause. "As far as I know, apart from announcing a policy about supervising dog owners in Shanghai, the government has done almost nothing to help stray animals, animal rescuers or adopters," Yin said.

In May 2011, the Shanghai Dog Management Regulations were introduced limiting families to one dog each. Afraid that she will be reported, the kindhearted He seldom takes her five dogs out at once in case she is reported to the police.

The regulations also allow for people who abandon dogs to be fined up to 2,000 yuan.. "But few people worry about losing that amount," Yin said.

The Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests about how the regulations are enforced and at present there are no laws governing stray animals in the city.