It’s just a coincidence that in Bahasa Malaysia, Kuching means ‘cat’ (spelled 'kucing'), but the city fathers have milked the homonym for everything it’s worth, branding Sarawak’s capital as the ‘Cat City’ and erecting a number of marvellously kitschy cat statues to beautify the urban landscape.
The Cat Fountain is an ensemble of polychrome cats who pose and preen opposite the Hotel Grand Margherita Kuching. On the roundabout at the corner of Jln Padungan and Jln Chan Chin Ann, the Cat Column features four cats around the bottom and four Rafflesia flowers near the top – the latter are just below the cat-adorned shield of the South Kuching municipality. And the Great Cat of Kuching , a 2½m-high white pussycat with blue eyes and wire whiskers, is perched at the eastern end of Jln Padungan, on a traffic island just outside the Chinese ceremonial gate.
