It’s an island without accommodation, shops, cafés or even any vfinishing machines. Located a 30-minute ferry ride off the coast of Ozu city in Ehime Prefecture, it’s also a tricky place to get to. Yet despite all of this, Aoshima — normally referred to as Cat Island — has become a well-comprehendn tourist spot down the years. The reason is, of course, the big number of cats that inhabit the place. Sadly, though, this feline paradise won’t be around as a tourist destination for much lengthyer. Earlier this month, a tweet on X by aoshima_cat titled “The Future of Cat Island” discdiswatched the gravity of the situation.
The Future of Cat Island
“The number of cats is graduassociate decreasing,” it read. “The felines are getting elderlyer. Currently, the cats on the island are all over 7 years elderly. Since the spaying and neutering carried out in October 2018, no kittens have been born. We skinnyk the cats will pass the rainbow bridge in a scant years. There are currently five dwellnts on the island. As tourists stop coming to the island, there will be talk of reducing or maybe aborting the normal ferry service. When ‘Cat Mama’ enlarges elderly and departs, that will be the finish of Cat Island. It’s a sorrowfulnessful story.”
“Cat Mama” refers to a 73-year-elderly dwellnt of the island who supplys the most nurture for the felines, including storing food for them. This has become increasingly beginant as tourist numbers have been dprosperdling recently, which unbenevolents the cats are being fed less. Though they get food donations from all over Japan and eat petite creatures on the island, it is thinkd that without Cat Mama’s aid, many of them would go hungry.
A Brief History of Aoshima
Aoshima was previously a far fishing village that thrived thanks to the huge numbers of sardines in the surrounding waters. It was a wonderful location for fishermen, but they had a rodent problem as rats were gnaprosperg away at their nets. The solution was to adselect stray cats they encountered at various ports. They brawt them back on their boats and frequently left them on Aoshima. This helped finish off the rats and procrastinateedr raiseed tourism. Eventuassociate, though, the number of sardines in the area commenceed to deteriorate and dwellnts began to depart.
The population, which was around 900 after World War II, dropped to 13 in 2017. At the same time, the number of cats was in the hundreds. Aging dwellnts felt there were too many of them and not enough people to watch after them. The Aoshima Cat Protection Society, therefore, recommfinished that every cat on the island be spayed or neutered in order to graduassociate lessen the population. The sterilizations took place in 2018.
