How many cats are there on "Cat Island" Aoshima, Japan these days? Still a destination for "cat tourists" after the 2018 population control measures?

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Accepted answer

This article from the March 2022 issue of "Stars & Stripes" implies that there are still a fair number of cats around. That said, the article doesn't include the sorts of pictures of hordes of cats that you'll see on older sources, so it's not conclusive. It's possible that there are fewer now than there once were; it's also possible that the photographer just didn't manage to capture a photo that included a particularly large number of cats.

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In addition, the @aoshima_cat Twitter feed (in Japanese) appears to be run by a person who visits the island frequently. While @aoshima_cat does occasionally post pre-2018 photos, they usually seem to be labeled as such, and there are fairly recent posts such as this one from July 8 or this one from June 22 that show a fair number of cats (10+) in proximity.

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Finally, the sources I've found online indicate that the life expectancy of a feral cat in a colony with a caretaker (which would seem to apply here) is roughly 10 years. One would not expect the colony to have died out entirely within 4 years of the spaying & neutering initiative, though it stands to reason that it may have declined in population.

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