Let's Play Kill the Cat???

My first week sleeping in my new apartment was anything but restful.  While I did manage to sleep peacefully for the first night, the remainder of the week was filled with what seemed to be the soundtrack to a horror movie. 

I should start off by stating that I am a deep sleeper.  I’m the kind of person that conks out and stays like that until morning.  I can be poked, prodded, and moved from location to another and I will rarely wake up.   My old roommate used to come home from school and blare the music and sing to her heart’s content  and when I would come out of my room hours later she would be shocked that I had slept through our household recital.  And so, spending almost an entire week enduring auditory torture was a new experience for me. 

I awoke to sounds of barking, whimpering, squealing, and howls that brought about visions of a dog being brutally beaten.  I tried to pull the covers over my head and fall back to sleep but it was so loud that, even after closing the window, I couldn’t fall asleep.  I had difficulty figuring out where exactly the sounds were coming from and I, being a dog lover, considered the possibility of trying to go out and rescue this poor animal from whatever pain was being inflicted upon it.  Then I decided that it was probably a foolish move on my part to try to be the foreign rescuer and that I would just ask my coworkers about it the next day.  The sounds finally subsided after a couple of hours and I managed to get a few hours of shut-eye. 

The next night brought about even more disturbing sounds that have I’ve only heard one other time in my life.  I had been staying with a friend up in Edmonton and we were housesitting out in the country.  We were taking care of two dogs, a flock of cockatoos, and an outdoor farm cat.  We hadn’t seen the cat at all during our brief stay there and we had started to get worried.   We were almost asleep one night when we heard squealing and hissing from outside.  It sounded like the cat was in battle with a coyote and was on the losing end.  Thankfully, we found the cat the next morning and it was safe but that noise was like nothing I’ve heard before…until Korea.  

For two nights, I tossed and turned being woken up constantly by shrieks and wails of cats until I was finally convinced that the horror stories must be true. Before I came to Korea, I read a few stories about rogue individuals that do this withI read a few stories about rogue individuals that do this with stray animals. So that's what I thought was happening.  Someone was taking these animals and beating them until they were tender enough to kill and eat in dog/cat soup (yes, they do eat that here in some places).   I know it seems dramatic but at the time I was so horrified by the thought of inhumane animal butchering that I couldn’t take it any longer.  So at 2:30am, I threw on a jacket, grabbed a flashlight and my phone, and headed out to investigate.  In hindsight, this was not a smart move nor is it recommended (mom, don’t tell dad).  So I wandered the neighbourhood following the sounds of a dying cat until I came to an empty dirt space behind a building that was close by.  So I creeped up closer and peered over the fence.  That’s when I saw them.  The mini gathering of tom cats.  The rest of them watched from their perches on the fence post while two others circled an abandoned truck.  They were not a happy bunch of kitty cats.  Think of a tamer version of demonic cats.  Anyways, so I broke up the fight, shooed them away, and went home ready for a good night’s sleep.  Now when I hear the cats and dogs in the nieghbourhood,  I can put my ear plugs in and be guilt-free all night long.  Now that I've been here for awhile I've also realized that the whining dog is somebody's pet that doesn't like to be left outside at nighttime and is left to "self-soothe."  A very anti-climatic ending but in this case, I was glad that it turned out to be so.  

Well those were the first few nights of my time in Korea but stick around for my next post, Banshees in the Neighbourhood…