Beijing, China - Jan 18, 2018
1. Cat meowing

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2. Various of cats in cat house run by Cai Jie

3. Chen Xiaodan, cat lover, back home, hanging handbag with cat pattern on shelf
4. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Chen Xiaodan, cat lover:
"I'm not a local Beijinger, and I move a lot. Sometimes I change jobs, so I don't have enough time to take care of a cat."
5. Various of Chen reading book
6. Chen picking up mobile phone with cat pattern on cover
7. Chen flipping through cat pictures
8. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Chen Xiaodan, cat lover (starting with shot 7, partially overlaid with shot 9, ending with shot 10):
"To put it simply, raising 'cloud cats' is about looking at pictures of cats and watching interesting videos on the Internet. And you can also feed cats on some apps every day. It feels good to look at those adorable furballs. I'm happy to see those cats even though I don't have a cat of my own."
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9. Chen watching cat video on phone
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10. Various of Cai playing with cats
11. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Cai Jie, cat house owner (starting with shot 10):
"The very reason why people want pets is that they can get closer or attend to their pets. You may feel a lot better by patting them when you are unhappy."
12. Various of cat videos, pictures online

Raising virtual cats is getting trendy among young Chinese people recently, especially among unmarried folks living by themselves in major Chinese cities.

This phenomenon, also known as "raising cloud cats", began with cat owners sharing photos and videos of their pets on social media.

According to Cai Jie, an owner who runs a cat house, people of different age groups are raising cats now. Most of them are in their 30s or 40s, but now people who were born after the 90s are also catching up.

Official statistics of the White Paper on Pet Industry in China 2017 show that the number of pet cats and dogs in China reached 87.46 million as of the end of 2017, and this figure is likely to increase by 40 percent in the next three years, which means in every ten people, there would be one raising a cat or a dog.

Cai said the reason why more people prefer to raise cats is because felines don't require as much care as dogs.

He also added that owning cats is absolutely a dream for the cat lovers, but for those people who can't afford to have cats, either because they work 24/7, or their living conditions do not allow them to have cats themselves, the next best choice would be raising cats on the Internet.

Chen Xiaodan, a Beijing drifter, is one of those cat lovers. Cats are everywhere in her life, but none of them are actually real.

"I'm not a local Beijinger, and I move a lot. Sometimes I change jobs, so I don't have enough time to take care of a cat," Chen said.

Chen spends much of her time reading books, and one of her favorites is "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe, an American writer.

"To put it simply, raising 'cloud cats' is about looking at pictures of cats and watching interesting videos on the Internet. And you can also feed cats on some apps every day. It feels good to look at those adorable furballs. I'm happy to see those cats even though I don't have a cat of my own," said Chen.

But Cai doesn't share the same view when it comes to the so-called "cloud cats". He doesn't think it is practical at all.

"The very reason why people want pets is that they can get closer or attend to their pets. You may feel a lot better by patting them when you are unhappy," said Cai, as he believes that simply looking at those cats on one's mobile phone isn't the same as having a real cat.

Anyway, the lifestyle of raising cats or pets online is slowly seeping into people's lives in today's fast paced world.