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Comment by stolen_biscuit | Hacker News Reader

> 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 residents felt there were too many of them and not enough people to look after them. The Aoshima Cat Protection Society, therefore, recommended that every cat on the island be spayed or neutered in order to gradually reduce the population. The sterilizations took place in 2018.

Is there anybody local that wants the cats to stay? Sounds to me like the program is working as intended. Sure tourists love it, but if there's nobody local to look after the animals welfare, it should end the way it's been planned it seems to me.

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>Is there anybody local that wants the cats to stay?

There are five locals. One is the "cat mama" mentioned, who presumably likes the cats but realizes their fate without her is grim. The other four probably don't care that much.

> Sounds to me like the program is working as intended. Sure tourists love it, but if there's nobody local to look around, it should end the way it's been planned it seems to me.

Are we talking about the country of Japan or cat island here? The declining cats of cat island is a wonderful metaphor for the declining population of Japan island.

Makes no sense to me really. Sure the population will decline and maybe in 100 or 200 years Japan's population will recover. Why go through that mess when you can just have 100 million non-Japanese people slide in, just give free citizenship to anyone that has a kid on Japanese soil and don't enforce immigration law, simple as.

If it’s a tourist attraction, there’s probably an argument for keeping it running on the government’s dime

I suppose they can Disney-fy it, hire people to live/work there as caretakers, but is that what the area wants/needs?

I remember reading an article about Prague, where the author felt like it's been turned to Disneyland: because of the tourism boom, the city got littered with tourist gift shops and eateries.

Prague didn't seem very much like Disneyland when I was there, except maybe by the clock which everyone photographs.

we could see cats split into prey and predator, or them develop great fishing abilities or bird lure and climbing capabilities, life finds a way to make many out of few opportunities .

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