According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Pet Registration Information System, Taiwanese dog and cat registrations have been climbing for years and in 2023 exceeded 3 million, which is more than Taiwan’s population of children under the age of 16. Recognizing that people are getting closer to their pets and spending more money on them, businesses are tapping into the resultant demand with creative food, healthcare, and entertainment offerings for pets.

The fur-baby economy

Ali Wang, an analyst with the Institute for Information Industry’s Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), tells us that the global pet economy is currently worth more than US$230 billion. In the US, the world’s largest pet market, an estimated 70% of households have pets, with Millennials owning the largest share of these animals (30%), and Baby Boomers the second largest.

“Different age groups spend money differently, and pet-related consumption reflects this,” says Wang. She explains: “Millennial pet owners view pets as family members and provide more attentive and varied care, managing their pet care much like childcare.”

Taiwan’s pet market has tracked trends in the US. Wang says that an MIC survey of people born in or after 1991 found that pet owners budgeted NT$2,000 per month for their dogs and cats, but actually spent NT$3,000 per month, 50% more than their budgets. Based on this figure, Taiwan’s pet market could be worth as much as NT$80 billion per year.
 

Technological assistance

Taiwan’s younger generation is also very comfortable with technology and is turning more and more to technological aids and innovations to solve pet-­related problems.

Taiwanese businesses see opportunities in the needs of these “fur parents.” Furbo has developed a 360-­degree pet camera that enables pet owners to interact with their pets whenever they like via a cellphone app. They can even use the product, which is currently available in 12 countries, to toss treats to them remotely! And Lulupet has developed an AI-­enabled cat box that can detect markers of disease in cat waste, which could provide pet owners with an early warning of potential health problems.

≈ Benefiting pets and pet owners alike ≈

A platform for pet sitters

Candace Chen tells us about Fluv, the pet-care platform she founded, with her dog Skye in her arms. Chen says that after leaving her job in the US and returning to Taiwan with Skye in 2019, she had difficulty finding care for her fur baby when work or travel kept her away from home.

After talking to friends and learning that the problem was common, she reflected on her experience in the US, where pet sitters often care for animals in their owners’ homes. Such arrangements have definite advantages: they keep pets in a familiar environment when their owners are away, let the owners themselves rest easy, and provide pet sitters with an extra source of income. “It’s a win–win that helps both people and animals. So I decided to use technology to establish Fluv, a platform that enables every fur baby to get the care it needs.”

Fluv began by matching pets with sitters, focusing first on drop-in visits for cats. Since trust is key to a business that involves arranging for unfamiliar people to come into your home, Chen drew on her US experience once again by requiring Fluv’s pet sitters to undergo background checks, understand pet care, participate in online training and take tests. She also established comprehensive standard operating procedures for the company’s services. Once Fluv had steady income from its cat care business, it began developing dog boarding services. The company provides insurance for dogs, cats and pet sitters alike to protect the interests of pets and pet sitters. Fluv’s attention to detail and quality of service have enabled its gig-economy business model to establish a strong position in the Taiwan market.
 

Cultural differences

Fluv recently surpassed 100,000 registered users, and has more than 5,000 pet-sitters available for drop-in visits and more than 500 boarding locations. The numbers are astonishing, but Chen says that the arrival of the pandemic just after Fluv’s 2020 founding nearly put the company out of business. Providing no-contact dog-walking services to people with confirmed Covid diagnoses got it through that difficult time.

The idea emerged when the company received an anxious call for help from a tearful fur parent. The pet owner had tested positive for Covid and was unable to take their dog outdoors to relieve itself. “The call inspired us to develop no-contact at-home services. Pet owners would put their dog on a leash and hang the leash outside their door, enabling a masked dog-walker to take it for a walk without coming into direct contact with the owner.

Speaking about differences in the relationships between fur babies and their owners in Taiwan and the US, Chen makes an interesting observation. She tells us that Americans regard their pets as best friends, while Taiwanese see them as children, and Taiwanese cat owners refer to themselves as “cat slaves” and “official poop cleaners.” There are differences in the services too, with Taiwanese placing an emphasis on a relationship with the care provider: “They want to meet and talk with a sitter or walker before entrusting their fur baby into the person’s care, so our matchmaking always involves a preliminary home visit, like a meeting ceremony.”

Analyzing data

Fluv’s young team excels at applying tech to solve problems. Chen tells us that Fluv’s customers are generally 25–45 years old and says, “We use tech to create work opportunities and quickly match customers with the most appropriate care providers.” The company also uses tech in the pet-sitter application process, using AI to search for keywords in sitter applications to identify applicants who have the traits Fluv is looking for.

Pet tech has become an active area of development in recent years. The pet-care industry’s utilization of data technology enables it to track stage-of-life information that can be used to analyze a pet’s health, which could provide business opportunities. Chen is already thinking about the possibilities: “Collecting pet-care data means we can monitor what a pet is eating, drinking, and excreting on a daily basis, as well as its sleep and activity levels. We also know its breed and how much it is fed. Once we have enough data, it will become useful for pet-insurance or AI-based preventive-care applications. This is our long-term goal, even though we know it will take years to collect sufficient data.”
 

≈ Cat rescue: Puzzle Cat Home ≈

Paying their own way

We arrive at Taipei cat rescue Puzzle Cat Home to find a worker cleaning the litter boxes, collecting cat feces that will be put to an unusual use. Impelled by a shortage of operating funds and inspired by an article he’d read about a foreign organization generating power from dog poop, Puzzle Cat founder Chen Jen-hsiang decided to find a use for the organization’s cat feces. He eventually discovered that a combination of certain enzymes and high heat could turn cat poop into fertilizer. Chen subsequently signed agreements with several small farmers to exchange the fertilizer for a share of the rice and tea they produce with it. Puzzle Cat then sells this produce under its own brand, using the proceeds to support the rescue.

This system enables every cat at Puzzle Cat Home to help support itself via a sustainable cycle: the cats produce waste that helps grow food, the food nourishes people, and the people care for the cats.

Good for people, good for cats

For all that it’s good to have the cats “paying their own way,” Chen admits to an ulterior motive.

He says that most citizen initiatives have a crowding out effect because people are unable to focus on more than a few things at a time. But Chen believes that equal treatment for all living things is as important a public issue as plastic use, marine waste and global warming. He chooses to communicate about the issue in a positive way in hope of persuading others to take an interest in it. He doesn’t drive people away with confrontation and tries not to ignore any contribution, no matter how small. He argues that the only way for people to work together and make progress is for everyone to take a breath and calm down whenever conflict begins to rear its head.

“It’s important to talk about things like animal rights and equal treatment for all living things,” says Chen, “but it’s also probably kind of utopian to do so. We have to pull our heads out of the clouds and bring ourselves back down to earth to talk about what we can do on a practical level.” Simply put, “Things have to be good for people before they can be good for cats.”
 

Advocating for the equality of life

Puzzle Cat Home currently has nearly 60 cats in residence in an urban interior space split between isolation rooms, a large cat room, and a feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) room.

Though sometimes referred to as feline AIDS, FIV is very different from human AIDS and is not contagious to people. Cats with the disease do not require long-term pharmaceutical treatment and can be cared for just like any other cat. But the disease’s name does lead many people to reject cats infected by it. Chen’s aim for Puzzle Cat Home is to rehabilitate the reputation of cats with the disease. “Don’t we have things in our everyday lives that we think positively about in spite of their imperfections?” What always comes to mind for him is a puzzle missing a piece. He says Puzzle Cat Home helps cats find homes, treating people and cats like jigsaw puzzles and helping them find the piece that makes them whole.

Chen started the cat rescue as a “cat hotel” that basically functioned as a “halfway house” for cats. But he came to realize that his organization needed to address a more fundamental issue: communicating the idea of equality for all living things. “I decided that I needed a place that was easy to get to and welcoming for both animals and people, so that people would want to visit.” With that in mind, he established Puzzle Cat Home in New Taipei’s densely populated Yonghe District. In its nine years in the area, the rescue has received only one complaint—from a neighbor who was disappointed that he’d moved the cat tree away from a French window, because “she was no longer able to see the cats.” At her request, he moved it back so she could see the cats again.

Empathy for other creatures

When asked about social-media posts showing people having a great time playing with dogs and cats, Chen ­offers a positive take: “Taiwan’s ‘animal consciousness’ is a work in progress.” He then adds, “I’m seeing some different voices slowly emerging, including those of groups passionate about different kinds of animals. In an effort to foster a positive understanding of these animals, members of these groups are sharing their personal feelings online in ways that are easy for others to grasp.”

Such efforts can foster empathy for other living things. Chen mentions a cat named Omi that has been returned to the rescue twice after failed adoptions. In both cases, the problem wasn’t with the adopters but with Omi, who has simply decided that Puzzle Cat is his home. “It wasn’t my decision,” says Chen, “it was Omi’s. This is an instance of me slowly learning from the cats, who want me to get over my self-important human-centric way of thinking.”

We visited Puzzle Cat Home on a warm day and noted that every one of its cats had found a patch of sunlight in which to groom itself. Our time at the rescue introduced us to living creatures acting according to their own volition and taught us empathy for beings unlike ourselves. Puzzle Cat Home is a good first step along the path to Chen’s goal.

For more pictures, please click 《Contemporary Pet Care: The Fur Baby Economy》