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BEIJING — The crazy meowing from a truck crashed on a highway outside Changsha, in central China, told rescuers this was no ordinary cargo; inside, over 1,000 cats and kittens were crammed into bamboo cages, headed for restaurant tables in the southern city of Guangzhou, Chinese media reported.

Some cats were badly injured in the nighttime accident two Sundays ago. Some were dying of thirst. Some were giving birth. Some were adopted by animal lovers who rushed to the scene, alerted by text message, telephone or microblog posts, said participants. In all, about 200 cats died; about a dozen are still in animal hospitals in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, according to local media reports.

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But in a new twist, 800 cats released by rescuers into the city are now causing a different kind of concern: how will they impact on the local environment? As well as dealing with hundreds of new, potentially fast-multiplying cats in the neighborhood, some rescuers are afraid the animals have simply escaped one fate for another and will soon be caught and sold again by the cat trappers and traders. As the Sanxiang Metropolitan News, a local newspaper, wrote, the fate of these cats is “an awkward fate.”

China has a different “cat problem” from the one my colleague, Gerry Mullany, wrote about yesterday in a post about a New Zealand economist who wants cats to be removed from his country because of their threat to the native bird species.

In China, in a brutal trade, cats are widely eaten, as are dogs. But increasingly, ordinary citizens are acting to stop it, carrying out “animal rescues” like in Changsha. The trade is a barely regulated free-for-all, and rescuers, well-wired, can be quick on the scene. There have been at least five major rescues over the last two years, according to Chinese animal rights activists.

In the case of Changsha, the cargo was reportedly worth about 50,000 renminbi ($8,000 US), according to some Chinese media; to get the cats away from the drivers at the crash scene, animal rescuers paid between 7,000 and 10,000 renminbi, according to people there (the detail remains a little unclear.)

A man who asked to be identified as Hunter, who works for the Changsha Small Animal Protection Association was there that night.

“The truck was badly destroyed and some of the cages broken, some cats escaped but we don’t know how many,” he said in a telephone interview.

“It was crowded and a mess, very smelly and dirty,” he added. “When we got there about 25 cats had already died and some were very weak or injured.”

“About 50 animal lovers came to the truck to rescue the cats and many people brought one home, or called their friends to adopt a cat,” he said.

Hunter said the number of cats released was lower than the news report, up to 400, but said no one knew for sure. “Volunteers took them and dispersed them to different districts.

“I don’t what the precise figure is,” he said.

In a recent article, the Sanxiang Metropolitan News interviewed an animal welfare volunteer called Ms. Tian who recently had become concerned about the fate of the 800 released cats.

“Cats reproduce fast,” she said. “It’s very possible that it could cause alarm among people living in the community and lead to disaster for the feline ecosphere,” she said.

As the newspaper wrote: “From a journey to death to a journey to homelessness, from the table to the street, luck will determine which cats live.”

“Though neither their rescue nor their current conditions are ‘perfect,’ yet when seen from the point of view of living creatures, every good heart that protects life is worthy of respect,” the paper wrote. “Cat traders, cat catchers and cat eaters cannot escape people’s pursuit of morality.”