Screenshot from YouTube Channel: Wukong's Adventures. Fair Use.

Wukong was a stray cat adopted by a bicycle traveller-blogger, Zhao Shuo, on October 26, 2024. After his adoption, the two travelled together throughout China's Xinjiang province, and Wukong became a popular internet celebrity with thousands of followers. However, on April 15, the cat was found dead on a road near Miran – a town in Xinjiang region, about two kilometers away from the visitor center where Zhao settled.

Upon hearing the news, Wukong’s followers were overwhelmed by grief and outraged by the “official” explanation of the cat's unnatural death.

Mysterious death

Wukong’s death was first reported on April 16 as a car accident, where the cat was crushed by a vehicle and left in the middle of the road, according to online news outlet Juipainews, a subsidiary of state-funded Changjiang News. Reportedly, the information came from the local police. The outlet added that Zhao had apparently settled the dispute with the driver.

However, the cat owner denied the claim in a video released on May 4, denouncing the report as fake news, as he himself did not know the details of Wukong's death. He recounted how he had discovered his cat's body at around 7 pm on April 15 and had, up to that point, failed in finding surveillance footage that might shed light on Wukong’s death. Zhao also raised a number of questions in the video: Why was the feline, which usually stayed within a 200-meter radius of its mobile cat house, found 2 kilometers away in the middle of the road? Why was there a 20-minute blackout on Wukong's GPS records between 4:10 and 4:30 pm? And after the blackout, why did its location suddenly change from the visitor center to the roadside?

Moreover, upon consultation with three vets, who conducted three post-mortem X-ray and CT scans, Zhao ruled out a car accident as the cat's cause of death, as its body did not have any bone fractures or external and internal wounds. The vets believed that the feline was likely killed by poisoning, as there was dark-colored blood coming out of its mouth and nose hours after its death, according to Zhao's account.

The 42-minute-long video was deleted on Chinese social media, but here is a YouTube backup with English subtitles:

Many also found it incredible that the surveillance cameras in the visitor center failed to function on April 15, as the Chinese authorities have invested a huge amount of money in surveillance technology, in particular networked CCTV, for the purpose of social stability control in the Uyghur region, and Miran is a tourist site with a heavy military presence. Here is a Weibo comment concerning the “failure” of surveillance:

就在游客中心2公里的地方 一条猫被投毒致死 结果监控全无什么也拍不到 去了就有生命危险以后谁还敢去玩啊 ​

Just two kilometers away from the visitor centre, a cat was poisoned to death, but there isn’t any surveillance footage showing how it happened. Who dares visit such a place?

With so many unanswered questions, about 3 million social media users self-mobilised to investigate the cause of the feline’s death by collecting driving records, CCTV footage, or satellite images of the museum's surrounding areas between 4:00 and 6:00 pm. Some netizens even offered cash rewards for useful footage. 

Call for legislation against animal cruelty

While the citizens’ investigations haven't revealed much, they have sparked conversations about animal rights.

Back in 2020, animal rights activists revealed the existence of an online network of cat abuse in China. From time to time, there were reports that cat abusers shared and sold cat torture videos through online chat groups. Reportedly, some members in the network even offer a cash reward of up to USD 500 for killing celebrity cats. Many, thus, believed that Wukong might have been a target of these animal cruelty groups.

In China, animal protection laws are confined to safeguarding wild animals, and no regulation prohibits cruelty against domestic or stray animals. Stray dogs and cats are often targets of poisoning and illegal trading, as the country allows the consumption of cat and dog meat and sees regular crackdowns on stray dogs as a means to maintain public hygiene and safety.

For years, the public has called for legislation against animal cruelty, but the Chinese authorities have remained in a limbo. Wukong’s death is making animal lovers more impatient, and they flooded Weibo with angry comments such as:

世界之大，却容不下一只猫，猫咪也不知道人心如此坏！《反虐动物法》该抬上来了，猫猫狗狗不能因为常见就放弃保护，肆意虐待，放纵吃…

The world is big, but it can not accommodate a cat. Cats have no idea that the human heart is so bad! The Anti-Animal Cruelty Act should be enacted, we can’t give up protecting cats and dogs just because they are common. They are being recklessly abused, tortured and eaten…

Blaming the cat and its owner

As the public resentment continued rising, suddenly, on May 9, Zhao released a video and a statement saying that, upon communication with various local authorities, including public security, propaganda, and tourism departments, they concluded that Wukong died after eating a rodent by mistake. He said:

其他的幾種死，因為車禍、投毒、虐殺都完全排除掉了。所以這樣說的話，整個悟空的死因最大的責任人就是我，我作為它的主人沒有看好它。悟空的死因和其他人完全無關，而且這個事件給當地造成了非常不好的輿論影響。在此我向所有人表示歉意。…另外再提醒所有人兩點，第一點就是永遠不要盲目的相信任何人和媒體，尤其是像九派新聞這種無良媒體。甚至也不要相信我。所有人要有自己的獨立判斷..

The other causes of death — car accidents, poisoning, and animal torture — have all been ruled out. Therefore, the person most responsible for Wukong's death is me, as its owner, I did not take care of it. The cause of Wukong's death has nothing to do with anyone else, and this incident has created a very bad public opinion about the region. I want to apologise to everyone…. I would also like to remind everyone of two more issues. The first is to never blindly trust anyone or the media, especially unscrupulous media like JiupainNews. Don't even trust me. Everyone should have their own independent judgment…

After the apology, Zhao deleted two videos about Wukong’s death on Chinese social media platforms, set his accounts to private, and stopped commenting on the incident.

Most people found such an official explanation implausible. One Weibo user mocked the local authorities:

当地各部门如果这种说法会令人更加信任你们，那么好吧，只能信了。

若羌县米兰镇有致死性啮齿类动物，不知道对当地牛羊鸡鸭鹅是什么影响，也很难不怀疑会间接伤害吃下当地牛羊鸡鸭鹅肉的人，所以会远离此地的，谢谢官方提示

If local authorities really believed their explanation was believable, then fine we will trust their story. Now that such deadly rodents exist in the Miran Town of Rouqiang county, what would be the impact on their cows, goats, chickens, ducks and geese? People can’t help but have doubts about local food security. So, thank you for the official advice in warning people to stay away from the region.

Quite a few social media users did indeed make their judgment based on the crowd-sourced investigation that Wukong’s cause of death was rat poison placed in the tourist site. However, as the authorities did not want to take responsibility for the feline’s death, they staged it as a car accident, produced fake news about it, and removed surveillance footage that could shed light on what had happened to the cat around the visitor center. In the end, Wukong had to bear the responsibility for its own death, and its owner had to apologize for causing a public stir.

However, some highlighted Zhao’s comment about “believing in no one” and stressed that Wukong’s death would remain a mystery. Yet, the “truth” was revealed in the rationality behind the cover-up — what exactly were the authorities afraid of?