Beyond the creativity and mechanical genius, seeing someone pour hundreds of hours into delighting his furry friends is the most magical part of all!
The internet can be a cruel place. Doomscrolling through relentless bad news, toxic comment sections, and rage-bait stories can make spending time online exhausting. But every so often, a pocket of sunshine comes along and makes you think that it’s worth keeping your ultra-fast broadband subscription.
Once such patch of online whimsy is Xing’s World. If you have ever spent hours falling down the internet rabbit hole (like me) of hyper-realistic pet miniatures, chances are you have stumbled upon this project run by Xing Zhilei, a DIY creator from Henan, China.
Xing’s Cat Town project has captivated millions beyond mainland China’s social media platforms where he first gained virality, with his videos now racking up over a billion views worldwide on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
But what makes his project so special?
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Too good and true
What began as a modest fatherly crafting hobby has evolved into an astonishing feat of micro-engineering known as Cat Town—a sprawling, feline-sized metropolis built entirely by hand inside a converted factory space.
Every detail has been so meticulously designed and engineered that I can’t blame netizens for thinking everything is AI-generated. In response, Xing posted videos showing that every detail indeed is handmade.
Xing doesn’t just build static dioramas. He crafts fully interactive mini-structures designed specifically for cats. Small- to medium-sized dogs can enjoy the facilities, too, as I spotted their family’s adorable Shiba Inu Shiba-san in some of the videos. Over the past three years, his builds have come alive with working lights, running water (hot and cold!), flushing toilets (LOL!), and automated machinery.
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From a kid’s toy house to an expansive catropolis
Xing’s journey into full-scale miniature urban planning didn’t happen overnight. In his profile on the Singaporean channel CNA’s show Hobsessions, Xing shared that he traces his love for DIY building to when he was only five years old.
He recalled when they had some renovations done at their house, and workers left behind lots of scrap materials. “So I used a knife to carve things out of them, like a tank or pistol. In my childhood, I took apart a lot of things and modified them,” he said. Xing mentioned that a lot of his projects were inspired by his childhood fantasies, adding that “ideas that might have seemed childish back then—I am actually fulfilling those childhood dreams today.”
Before his lucky pets inherited a city, the millennial craftsman laid the groundwork for his viral success sometime in 2022. In the same CNA interview, he shared that at that time he built for his daughter an intricate, fully functional 1.4m house, about 3.6 times smaller than a regular home. The “toy” house is nothing short of jaw-dropping. It has its own living room, bedroom, and kitchen with mechanized appliances.
Seeing how much joy those detailed structures brought his wife and daughter, he decided to focus his skills toward his other passion: his pets. Between 2022 and 2023, Xing took over an empty factory floor in his hometown and began laying the physical foundation of Cat Town.
What started with a few interactive climbing structures and simple wooden bedrooms soon gathered momentum, turning into a full-time undertaking. With Xing’s ever-expanding project, he now also has a team that assists him and his wife with tasks like heavy construction, assembling parts, and filming, though Xing still acts as the primary designer, engineer, and creative director behind every build.
By 2024, Cat Town had already undergone a massive expansion with its own vibrant commercial hub for main feline star, Mr. Nice, and his adorable hamster frenemy Tutu (who has a kickass bike, by the way). The two mostly get along but have some hilarious cat-and-rodent animosity at times.
Today, the completed areas of the town feature an astonishing array of working, highly interactive facilities. Cat Town might as well be renamed Mew York!
Cats can wander into “MeowDonald’s,” run by the surly-looking Rhonda McDonald (hehe) for a meal, visit a movie theater equipped with a functional video screen, relax at a spa, swing by a local supermarket, and even withdraw paw-sos from a cat-sized bank. Xing even made a custom mini Cybertruck (I want one for my dogs!) with a fully automated garage.
No metropolis is complete without recreational spots, of course, so Xing built a sports arena complete with mini basketball hoops, a feline-proportioned pool table, and even a luxury swimming pool. Oh, have I mentioned there’s also a rather picturesque canal not so different from that of Venice?
At Cat Town, these pets are living a much better life than I am in Quezon City!
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From pet commutes to concerts
All these were already impressive, but the project truly achieved global fame in August 2025 with the unveiling of its most complex engineering marvel yet, Cat Town’s crown jewel—an underground metro station. Yes, the catropolis got its first subway way ahead of Metro Manila.
Xing spent over four months (the average time he spends on his larger projects) hand-crafting a hyper-realistic metro system featuring functional escalators, tactile paving (for safety, why not!), and automated platform screen doors that open in perfect sync with the arriving train. It even has a working PA system because our pet pals have to mind the gap, too! Heck, Cat Town’s subway system is better than Metro Manila’s current railway lines! DoTR could learn a thing or two from this.
Upon the video’s upload, it racked up over 100 million views across international platforms, cementing Cat Town’s status as a viral sensation. This is one of the few moments internet virality is well deserved.
More recently, and just a few weeks after the World Cup, Xing revealed the latest addition to Cat Town: its own stadium. In the video, he said that Mr. Nice is going to be the first cat to hold a solo concert there (proud of you, Mr. Nice). He also asked if football is going to be played entirely by cats, should it be called pawball instead? It’s exactly this wholesome sense of humor that adds even more life to Xing’s creations. At the end of the video, as promised, we are shown Mr. Nice “performing” a purrific song in the stadium, complete with LED screens and the whole shebang!
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An expanded Cat Town ahead
Xing’s creativity and love for his pets know no bounds, so he does not intend to stop at the magnificent subway system. In the works are complex subterranean utilities and residential upgrades. Recent project updates show Xing building miniature working sewer systems, alongside multi-story, custom-designed residential townhouses tailored to each cat’s personality.
He also continues to solicit ideas from his massive and devoted online community. Ambitious plans include an even grander civic center and expanding the transit grid to connect multiple “districts” across his massive factory workshop floor.
But beyond the marvels of this tiny metropolis, Cat Town’s real charm goes deeper than its remarkable scale, clever contraptions, or the sheer cuteness of commuting critters. It’s the pure affection driving the project. For pet lovers like me, seeing someone pour hundreds of hours into delighting his furry friends is the most magical part of all!
