Aka Thieves' Market, Bargain Street, Catchee Street, Paddy's Markets, Samshu Corner, Mor Lor Gai and, officially, Upper Lascar Row, for the past 150 years, this has been a gathering point for people ... and vice.
Cat Street started out as an Indian community, clustered around Hong Kong's first mosque built nearby in 1843. Most were sailors who lived in boarding houses during stopovers in Hong Kong. In English, the sailors were known as Lascars, a Persian term for 'army', originally used for Indian soldiers in the British army. In Chinese, they were referred to as 'mor lor', probably derived from the English term 'Moor' and applied to Pakistanis, Indians and Arabs.
It was a street of vice. Mr Big was Sz Man-king, who ran the gambling dens and brothels patronised by the sailors and had close ties to triads and pirates. He also rebuilt the Man Mo Temple in 1847.
Apart from drunken sailors, gamblers, prostitutes and opium addicts, turn-of-the-century Cat Street was also a haven for thieves and pirates - 'cat burglars' - who went there to sell stolen antiques. Their pidgin English cry 'catchee', meaning to buy, is another possible source of the street's popular name.
Gradually, the brothels, gambling dens and fences moved out, but the antiques stayed. By the early 1970s, Cat Street's chaotic mixture of shops, stalls and hawkers selling antiques and junk, had become an tourist attraction. It was a time warp, selling the everyday goods of ancient China and the more recent past.
Then, five years ago, the Urban Services Department stepped in, moving the unlicenced vendors out. Complaints from residents and antique-shop owners, unhappy about the rubbish left by hawkers, blocked access and competition, seem to have been the catalyst. The USD had a plan to relocate the vendors in a covered market on Circular Pathway. It was dark, unventilated and surrounded by high rises, and no one bothered moving in.
Lined by shops selling expensive antiques, Cat Street no longer bustles. The hawkers are gone. Urban Services officers regularly patrol the area and fine shop owners and stallholders who spill out from their allotted spaces. The Government plans to issue no more licences for stalls on the street: when the existing stallholders retire, what is left of the spirit of Cat Street will go with them.