Olympics clean-up Chinese style: Inside Beijing's shocking death camp for cats

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.

Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003.

Other measures being taken to better Beijing for hte Olympics:
*Polluting factories in and around the city are being ordered to shut down or relocate during the Games - no smog here!
*Drivers are allowed out on to the roads only three times a week.
*Fares on the underground network have been cut six-fold to keep people off buses
*Hobos are being moved to out-of-town camps. Or given money to go elsewhere.
*Taxi drivers given lessons in how to greet passengers politely in English
*Courtesy Campaign: teach grumpy citizens how to smile + be pleasant to foreigners.

Inside the death camp:
"When we went inside, we saw about 70 cats being kept in cages stacked one on top of the other in two tiny rooms.

"Disease spreads quickly among them and they die slowly in agony and distress. The government won't even do the cats the kindness of giving them lethal injections when they become sick. They just wait for them to die.

"It is the abandoned pets that suffer the most and die the soonest. They relied so much on their owners that they can't cope with the new environment.

"Most refuse to eat or drink and get sick more quickly than the feral cats."
The killing of the six stray cats at the kindergarten - where staff at a Beijing cigarette factory leave their children - is the most striking illustration of the city-wide fear of cats.

A teacher at the nursery said: "We did it out of love for the children. We were worried the cats might harm them. These six cats had been hanging around the kindergarten looking for food.

"So three male teachers put out plates of tuna in cages for bait, trapped the cats and then beat them to death with sticks.

"We were very worried the children might try to stroke them and that the cats might scratch them or pass on diseases. We had to get rid of the cats and this was the only way to do it."