Volunteers who work to feed and shelter the city's population of stray cats and dogs during the inhospitable winter are urging people to step forward and offer some of the needy creatures a home.

"There are loads of stray animals that have been saved by organizations or animal lovers and are waiting to be adopted, but would-be adopters are scarce," said Zeng Li, founder of the Beijing-based stray cats protection website Luckycats.

Zeng's organization rescues almost 2,000 stray cats each year but only 10 percent end up being adopted. The rest languish in shelters or are spayed and neutered and returned to the communities where they were captured.

Speaking during a fund-raising activity in November before a group of members of the Beijing Supercar Club (SCC), Lu Di, a volunteer in her 80s who founded the Beijing-based China Small Animal Protection Association, said: "I really hope some of you can take several dogs back home, their living conditions here are miserable."

The SCC members had raised almost 60,000 yuan for the association in less than 20 minutes but, while the car owners were generous, none walked away with any of the 600 strays.

Zeng said the reaction was not unusual, people in the capital are reluctant to adopt stray animals, mainly because they see them as high-risk.

"Most stray animals have been abandoned by their former masters for some reason and are no longer kittens or puppies," said Zeng.

"People may worry about their health condition," she said. "Because the animals have led a vagrant life for a period, people worry about them carrying infectious diseases and wonder if they will pass them on to their families."

While health problems may be a concern for some, animal volunteers like Australian Jen Bailey, who fosters stray cats and helps them acclimatize to humans, are fighting the stigma against strays.

She said the one-on-one attention given to strays at foster homes offers a chance to notice any health problems.

But the relatively few people who are willing to adopt a stray are, somewhat incongruously, facing strict selection procedures from shelters.

Almost all animal protection websites in Beijing have detailed requirements for would-be adopters that include a minimum size of home, requirements about the adopter's occupation and a promise they will never abandon the animals.

Scarlet Zhang, founder of Beijing Cat, a shelter geared toward Beijing's expat community, said the website formerly focused on getting local people to adopt.

"But they just broke my heart," Zhang said. She said she makes phone calls once in a while to check on the cats' condition after sending them to new homes. But some people didn't answer her calls because they had lost the cats.

After that, she geared her service to expats.

"I think culture is involved in this issue," she said. "People from Western countries see animals as part of their family rather than as a subordinate."

For Piotr Gillet, a diplomat from the Polish embassy who recently adopted a young stray dog named Snape from the International Center of Veterinary Services, the issue of whether or not an animal from a shelter will be healthy is a no-brainer.

"I would rely much more on the opinion of a veterinarian at a shelter than someone trying to sell me a dog," he said. "So far, it has been reliable.

"We feel happy that we were able to offer some small help, both to the dog and the shelter."