Thread by @JaredTNelson

Day 56 of our Shanghai Covid lockdown

When it’s nice out at night, I unwind on our balcony in a rocking chair my aunt gave me when our oldest was born

It’s a full moon tonight and so quiet that you can hear the footsteps and swishing of the hazmat suits 10+ stories below

We don’t have an officially confirmed number, but we estimate that 70-80 people in our apartment community have tested positive and been taken to central quarantine over the past several weeks

It’s a relatively well-off area and, like many relatively well-off areas, a lot of people have a key status symbol in Shanghai - a pet dog, or even several pet dogs

Some of the people sent to central quarantine entrusted pet dogs to neighbors but there is also a fear that pets can spread Covid so many weren’t able to, and released the dogs into the community - possibly fearing for the safety of the dogs

We’ve always had a lot of “ownerless” cats in our community, which are usually fed by families with small children who like to take care of them or older families

Normally, they buy a lot of dry cat food and feed groups of cats late afternoon or at night

But the cat food has been harder to buy recently as the city prioritized food for people and other basic survival necessities for delivery during lockdown

At the same time, we’ve been restricted from going our of our front doors into the common areas below, where the cats are

The result is horrific

Each night, we hear hungry cats crying and fighting

Worse, we hear the hungry dogs - which is what I heard just now - catching a cat

The guttural animal sounds break the eerie silence as I sit in my rocking chair trying to forget about the day

It’s the suddenly interrupted silence that startles me

This part of Shanghai was never quiet and at all hours there were bikes, cars, planes, people, life

All happening, all the time, never silence

But now, everything is quiet

Except the terror of the starving cats and dogs