(Yicai Global) Jan. 19 -- China’s dog and cat market expanded rapidly last year as many young adults chose to adopt new pets and spend a small fortune on their food and medical bills.

The market scale jumped almost 21 percent to CNY249 billion (USD39.2 billion) in 2021 from 2020, and the pace of rising was 8 percentage points higher than that of total retail sales of consumer goods, according to a report released by market research firm Pethadoop and the China Pet Industry Association yesterday.

Urban households had nearly 58.1 million cats and almost 54.3 million dogs as of last year. Since 2018, an increasing number of people in big cities have particularly been choosing to adopt cats, potentially due to their flexibility in terms of living space and care.

Dogs tend to be more expensive to keep. The size of the country's dog market reached CNY143 billion last year, up 21.2 percent from 2020. That of the cat market exceeded CNY100 billion, up 19.9 percent.

A dog owner splurges CNY2,634 (USD415) on average per year to take care of their pet friend, up nearly 17 percent from 2020. Meanwhile, the average for a cat owner is CNY1,826, a number largely unchanged from a year before. Over the past three years, this divide has widened.

However, the money is increasingly going toward medical care and not pet food. In 2021, pet food made up 51.5 percent of each pet owner's spend, down from the 61.4 percent share logged in 2019. Meanwhile, medical care accounted for 29.2 percent of the expenditures, up from the earlier 19 percent.

Still, incomes may limit consumption growth. Almost 47 percent of pet owners have a monthly income between CNY4,000 and CNY9,999. Nearly 35 percent of all earn more than CNY10,000 per month.

The data show that the market is expanding with new pet lovers as the number of dogs and cats per capita hasn't changed significantly. A majority of the friends of animals are young. More than 46 percent of all pet owners in China were born after 1990. More than a fifth of the total were born after 1995.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi