Collecting information, looking for hair, extracting evidence, drones, thermal imaging equipment, cage net gloves, searching for hours to dozens of days, just to find the whereabouts of a missing cat or dog...
This is the daily routine of "pet detective" Sun Jinrong and his team - finding lost pets for helpers, charging fees and bounties.
In 2012, when the concept was still unfamiliar, Sun Jinrong took the first step and started a full-time pet detective in Shanghai.
He has taken orders from all over the country, has helped thousands of pets home, and has his own methodology and equipment.
In the past ten years, they have seen "God" lying on the outside of the air conditioner, on the roof of a dangerous building, "going down" to hide under the floor and the sewers, and they have also seen the golden retriever who went to other people's houses to eat and drink after getting lost, and the cat that went up from Puxi. Elevated run for dozens of kilometers to the border shepherd in Pudong.
After finding pets, they can usually get a bounty of several thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and some people even offer a bounty of "a house" and "a Porsche", but most of them are gimmicks.
It is not easy to get a bounty. In addition to professional equipment, it also requires careful judgment and adaptability, which is a double consumption of physical and mental energy.
In addition, they also have to face the pet owner's emotional catharsis, as well as the other party's lies, low prices and even cheating.
At present, Sun Jinrong and the team are still doing pet rescue work, similar to the pet version of 110.
The yard is full of small wooden houses painted green. He wants to make 10,000 cat dens and send them to the communities he is willing to accept to feed and live in the stray cats.
"Hide and Seek"
Night is the time to catch cats.
After 22:00, the "post-90s" old Wu from Guangzhou climbed up the fourth floor of a residential building in a residential building in Putuo District, Shanghai, carrying a large black bag half a person's height, trying to catch a lost contact for nearly a week. Tabby cat.
In his backpack, there are generally light sources for viewing footprints, thermal imaging search equipment, and drones. Most of these tools are purchased online, and some are handmade.
The raccoon cat hid on a suspended platform on the fourth floor. It didn't move for many days and probably didn't eat. Old Wu decided to lure it into the cage with food.
He put down a cat trap from the window, which contained cat bars and open cat cans, but the cat didn't take the bait.
Lao Wu's companion, Lao Gao, who was born in 1995, used an infrared thermal imager to observe the cat's condition in the residential building opposite.
"Look, this red group is a cat." Then, the red group began to move along the edge of the rooftop.
Find the location of the cat and half the job is done.
Lao Gao said that before this, there were more uncertainties. In addition to using drones and thermal imagers, it was also necessary to sample and collect cat feces, so as to facilitate comparison when suspected feces were found in relevant areas, and cats would also be collected. Gross storage for easy checking with the owner.
Lao Wu came to the building where Lao Gao was located, and reminded that the cat walking around was actually a stray orange cat that confused his eyes. There were actually four cats moving on this small rooftop, but the domestic cat was late. Don't show your face, at most show your ears.
Their confrontation will continue until the cat "takes the bait".
This is an ordinary order in the daily work of Lao Wu and Lao Gao.
Although they like to add the word "Old" before their surnames when addressing their colleagues, in fact, most of the team members are post-90s or even post-00s.
Their "master" is Sun Jinrong, born in the 1980s, who claimed to be the first to be a pet detective.
In 2012, Sun Jinrong gradually entered the industry as a volunteer to rescue cats and dogs.
At that time, almost no one did professional pet hunting, and people's cognition of cats and dogs was also functional.
"The market is almost non-existent, and the customer base has not yet been established. Everyone's positioning of pets is different."
For the first three years, his work did not improve until 2016, when an opportunity appeared.
The short video platform "Er Geng" made a feature film for Sun Jinrong, titled "Pet Detective", which brought him to the public's eyes at once, and more people were able to learn about this new industry.
After gaining a certain reputation, he caught up with the rapidly expanding pet market.
According to the "White Paper on China's Pet Consumption Trends in 2021" released by the consulting company, the scale of my country's urban pet market will be close to 300 billion yuan in 2020, and the compound growth rate will reach 32.8% in the six years from 2015 to 2020.
This unpopular career has gradually become a "serious job", and Sun Jinrong has successively recruited many teammates.
Today, there are about 20 people in his studio, all of whom are not very old.
different pets, different owners
"To find our owners, most of them lost the peek-a-boo 'game' with their pets."
Sun Jinrong said that after losing pets, most people choose to search for them by themselves, but often find that they do not know their pets as well as they think, so they turn to cat detectives for help.
For example, owners generally think that cats and dogs can recognize themselves and are gluttonous, but when pets run away, they will often behave strangely and will not go to places they usually go to.
Cats especially like to hide, they can pass through narrow gaps, and hide in unreachable heights, hidden sewers, dangerous buildings and dry wells.
Many cats will keep moving after getting lost.
"It feels that it hasn't completely hidden itself, so it will continue in another place. After several tossing, it must be hidden in a very perverted place." Sun Jinrong said that some cats have hidden their heads, but their butts are still outside, so they can't see it. , I feel that others "can't see me".
Dogs are more lively than cats, and like to run to places with many people.
"Especially Shiba Inu, Husky and Border Shepherd. After losing it, it doesn't feel like it's lost at all." Sun Jinrong said that they would walk happily and would not be lost or scared at all. In one case, there was even a dog. On the high-speed "release self" run for more than ten kilometers.
In addition to cats and dogs, Sun Jinrong's team also found rabbits, lizards, birds and other animals.
Behind the animals with different personalities, the owners are also different.
Sun Jinrong believes that dog owners are generally outgoing and prefer to socialize with people; cat owners are more independent and have more ideas of their own.
Of course, there will be overlap between the two types of people.
Why are there so many lost pets?
Sun Jinrong said that this is inseparable from the rapid development of the pet market. There are more and more people who raise cats and dogs, but they may not have done enough homework before raising them. They just follow the trend and find various problems after raising them; of course, There will also be negligence of the owner, and there is no factor of closing the window or pulling the rope.
On the other hand, the city is expanding but the supporting facilities are not in place, and there is too little space for dogs to run. Many dogs, such as Bian Mu, are in a state where their physical strength cannot be exhausted, and they will choose to tear down their homes or even run away.
In Sun Jinrong's view, every order is unique, because every person and every pet is different.
They once flew to Zhengzhou to search for a Bengal cat worth hundreds of thousands of yuan by a pet blogger, voluntarily rescued a dog with a bucket on its head, found a Tibetan mastiff that fell into a river, and once squatted guarding a hiding and barking kitten. the deepest night.
And behind this, there are always some stories that touch people's hearts.
Looking for pets is also looking for lost emotions and life
In addition to knowing the habits of cats and dogs, pet detectives sometimes need to identify people's hearts.
Sun Jinrong mentioned a case of "hunting cats for 39 days".
He recalled that last winter, they received a request for help from a woman in her twenties who lost her cat. At first, they walked as normal and lost their search, but later found something strange, "We searched inside and out, but there were no clues about the cat. traces, because the cat is not here at all."
A day later, maybe because he couldn't bear the suffering of his daughter, the woman's father confessed that he was carrying his daughter and drove the cat to the junction between Shanghai and other places and threw it away.
Sun Jinrong said that the cat is already in her teens and may have accompanied the girl through an important part of her life.
Sun Jinrong and his colleagues went to find the place where the cat was lost. It was a wasteland beside the highway, there were many reeds, and it was difficult to search.
They searched for several days in a row, and finally, using a thermal imaging drone, in a dense grass, they saw a kitten nesting, which was the lost one.
It was a sensitive kitten, already bony, with bones jutting out of its back.
It wears a collar with bells when it is discarded, which exposes its location when it moves, limiting its prey.
Sun Jinrong said that it can be seen that the cat tried to break free of the collar, but it was unsuccessful.
The collar got stuck on its neck and front paws to the underarm position. When it was found, the place where it was tightened was already rotten and stench, and when the collar was pulled open, there were small white worms squirming.
They took the kitten directly to the hospital.
"The car is driving so fast, I'm afraid the cat will be gone before it sees its owner."
Sun Jinrong said that after finding the cat, the girl thought she was dreaming when she received the notice and kept thanking her.
As for why the cat was sent away, he speculated that it might be because the girl was pregnant, and the older generation always felt that keeping pets was not good for children.
The 39-day cat-hunting experience, for Sun Jinrong, is like a microcosm of his entrepreneurship, "I can't see the edge at a glance." "I thought at the time, I can't find it, but if I can find it, I know it Where, but I can't take it home, and if I give up so easily, I'll have regrets when I retire."
In the list Sun Jinrong received, there are many elderly people who have pets. Their children are studying or working outside. Pets provide important companionship for the elderly and make their lives more regular. The elderly will also have some feelings for their children. Transfer to pets.
Therefore, when the pet suddenly disappears, the elderly will be more anxious and sad.
Similarly, young people who have become "atomic" in big cities also need pet companionship more because of loneliness and stress - it is a comfort to live with a soft and furry animal in a small rental house.
"That's why there is a word called pet dependence." Sun Jinrong said.
To find pets, they need to "break into" strangers' homes and get clues from the helpers and the environment they live in.
Many times, people who seek help will vent their emotions on the pet detective first.
They cry, regret, or talk about themselves and their pets, as well as the pain of losing their pets.
"What we need more is a clear and rational statement that clearly states the age, color, time and place of the pet's loss." Sun Jinrong said, just like a psychological counselor, sometimes they need to conduct emotional counseling for clients until they make it clear what they are looking for. At the same time, we must maintain the same patience as a doctor and tell the owner that the success rate of finding a pet is the same as that of an operation. There is no 100% guarantee to find it, and we can only try our best.
under the bounty
Sun Jinrong's team charges according to the length of time and the number of participants. For example, if a single person searches for all equipment for 6 hours, it is 950 yuan, and for two people, it is 1600 yuan.
There is also a bounty. "Under normal circumstances, the bounty is 3,000 yuan for a cat (dog)", which is given to the person who finds the cat (dog) at first sight, but if the pet is not found in the end, the bounty part will be gone.
The bounties for hairless cats and ragdolls are even more expensive.
Because hairless cats have no way to trace hair traces, it is more difficult; and because of the high market price of puppets, the probability of being owned by others is greater.
Sometimes, Sun Jinrong felt that the word "bounty" was inappropriate. When a living pet was found, it could be called a bounty, but sometimes only corpses could be found.
"Maybe the word bounty has to be changed. Maybe it's more appropriate to use 'case closing amount', which means that the work of our pet detectives ends here."
"The highest reward I've encountered is a Porsche, but these pets have been lost for a long time, and they can hardly be found. The owner may know it very well." He said that if the pet has just been lost, the reward will be won at once. So tall, he hadn't seen it in 10 years.
Although they have been in this business for a long time, Sun Jinrong and the team will not sign contracts with customers for the "bounty" part, but rely on verbal agreements.
This sometimes brings some unhappiness and disputes.
In some orders, they found that the owner needed them to intervene when they were at a loss, but when there was a clue, they would persuade them to go back and forget about it, and even grab half of their position and stand in front of them. It was because of his own discovery that he refused to pay the bounty.
"We met a lost owner and felt that we found it too quickly and too easily, so we negotiated the price." Sun Jinrong thought: "Isn't it the sooner the better?"
He feels that sometimes, everyone seeks a sense of psychological balance.
"I thought you didn't put in too much labor, so you took my money." This kind of grievance will make the owner do some strange actions, such as finding an excuse to keep the team in the field for one more day after finding the pet. took a breath.
Before the epidemic, Sun Jinrong's team could receive dozens or even hundreds of orders for more than a month, and the time was cut into pieces. In the middle of the night, he might still be looking for a cat, sleep for a while during the day, and wake up again.
"Like a dog, a dog sleeps for a while and wakes up after a while."
In addition to the chaotic work and rest, when he is the busiest, he always thinks about it when he wakes up in the morning, where am I?
Maybe he was in Qingdao in the morning and arrived in Beijing in the afternoon. After the Beijing incident was over, he rushed to another place. The space he faced every day was different, which brought a long-term depression.
"When we are busy, we just don't have time to breathe. Probably the most relaxing thing is that an order is over. We will return, or we will feel a little more comfortable when we are on the way to the next order." He said, if the order is arranged in a row It is very dense, so there is no time to breathe, and it has been on the road.
This prolonged ordeal, and the joyous rebound of the eventual success, repeats itself over and over again.
"I feel like these 10 years have hollowed me out," he said, and he made himself too hard.
More and more he wanted to feel only the good parts of work.
"I actually feel a little bit retired now, because I'm doing short videos and I'm a lot less out of town."
10,000 cat dens
When Peng Mei News saw Sun Jinrong at the end of June this year, he was wearing a camouflage uniform, with a flat head and a tired tone, but sitting upright, he looked a little younger than his actual age, 40 years old.
He rented two private houses in the suburbs of Pudong, separated by a ten-minute drive, one for himself and the other as a studio, which he called "base".
In the small building where he lived, Sun Jinrong adopted two orange cats, two English shorts, and a "drone" that he wanted to train to transmit information, but in the end he only learned to talk to himself as a parrot.
He also hung small pennants sent by pet owners on several walls of his home, with slogans such as "Save my dog's life" and "Fast cat search".
Sun Jinrong was not supported at first.
After graduating from middle school, due to his father's traffic accident, Sun Jinrong's mother led him to work in Shanghai when he was a minor at the time. He had no professional skills. Three hundred dollars.
Like many young people who come to big cities, Sun Jinrong is often confused, but wants to do something that can stand out.
In 2012, pet hunting was still a new concept, and there were no cases to refer to. It was an endless career choice.
The advice his parents gave him was that instead of wasting time on this matter, it was better to find a job directly, even if he went to the factory to make screws, it would be more stable than it is now.
"I was also shaken at the time, whether to go to regular work or not."
In the end, he chose his own interests and rejected repetitive and mechanical work.
"The work on the assembly line is repeated every day, at least for me, it's like an emotionless machine for 8 hours." He said that if he really chose to drive screws at that time, perhaps "the soul will be destroy".
"I think the progress of society comes from children who don't listen to their parents. If every child follows their parents' plan, there will be no progress in society, and every generation should accept more new things." Sun Jinrong said , he still wants to encourage young people to experience the world more, have their own hobbies, try more what they really want to do, and don't frame themselves too early.
The other teammates in Sun Jinrong's team come from all walks of life, including chefs, truck drivers, and workers.
Lao Gao, born in 1995, is a chatty boy from Bozhou, Anhui. He graduated from a sports school. Before joining Sun Jinrong's team, he worked on the maintenance of air conditioners, opened Didi, and finally changed jobs.
He said that it is difficult to find a sense of belonging in big cities, and it is difficult to find a good job without skills or education. Under the epidemic, many former colleagues have returned to their hometowns.
His current job has made him feel a little at home. On the one hand, he likes cats and dogs, and he thinks it is a good deed, and on the other hand, he feels that he can learn something.
Recently, they built a cathouse in the backyard of the "base", filled with small wooden houses with painted green spires and design drawings on the walls.
Sun Jinrong said that these are all hand-made by the little friends. They want to make 10,000 cat dens and send them to various communities for free as a shelter and feeding point for stray cats.
They also set aside a small plot of land as a "cat cemetery," where dozens of kittens were found dead.
Small tombstones were erected on the grounds, scraped off the dust, with the nicknames and ages of the deceased kittens written on them.
Sun Jinrong said that before the epidemic, parents would bring their children to visit graves every year.
In the past two years, because of the epidemic, businesses like them that need to drive around, enter other people's communities and find pets at home are even more difficult to do. Especially in the past two or three months, they have hardly attended work, but they still have to pay their wages.
Sun Jinrong said that he originally planned to retire at the age of 50, but now this plan may have to be postponed, and perhaps "the pension money will be lost."
It was a bit difficult at the moment, but he did not regret choosing this path.
"Because I was too tired before, I experienced a sense of near-death, so I became more and more clear about what I came to this world for. For me, I may have experienced this world, and in these decades or even a hundred years, it can bring a little beauty. things," he said.
"Many of us have no hope in life, especially young people who don't know what to look forward to." Sun Jinrong sometimes falls into the same exhaustion.
Later, he planted grapes and mulberries behind the small courtyard of the base. He began to feel that he had never been so looking forward to the arrival of spring. Like a farmer, he had some hope.
Whenever he was anxious, he would drive for ten or twenty minutes, from the residence to the "base" to wait for a while, do some work and make a cat litter, or just walk and blow the air, and he would feel a lot calmer.
The Paper reporter Zhu Xuan