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It seems everything is becoming a subscription these days. However, one company in Japan may have just taken the concept too far.
Noraneko Bank, a company in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward that manages stray cats, opened its “Neko Hodai” (ねこホーダイ, “Unlimited Cats”) service on December 15th. For a paltry sum of 380 yen (around USD $2.90) a month, members could receive a cat under the company’s care.
Social media users criticized Neko Hodai for treating living creatures as objects. Users also criticized the company for its lack of quality controls. Members didn’t need to undergo any vetting to receive a cat. And cats could be returned without any fee. (One wonders how they ever intended to make money off of this scheme.)
Questions also arose over whether the company had legally registered its service. Under Japan’s Animal Control and Protection Law, a company selling pets for profit must register itself with any local jurisdictions in which it operates. (Even non-profits handling 10 or more animals must register. with local authorities.) It wasn’t clear that Noraneko Bank had taken these steps.
Ishikawa Taiga, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and the first openly gay man into serve in Japan’s National Diet, blasted the company and the service on Twitter. “This is awful. A subscription for lives. You’d wish that stray cats, in particular, could live the rest of their days in peace with foster parents.” Ishikawa said the scheme violated the Animal Protection and Control Law, which requires foster families to adopt a pet for life, and vowed to hold hearings.
“Not a subscription”
In response to the controversy, Noraneko Bank said it was suspending the service before it ever started. It claimed it would return everyone’s money and cancel recurring billing before the end of the year.
The company’s statement makes it unclear exactly why they are suspending the service. The statement says that it “received more subscriptions than expected” and couldn’t “guarantee appropriate and smooth service.” However, it also mentions the numerous questions and controversies surrounding Neko Hodai.
The company also used its statement to respond to accusations the program was a “cat subscription service”, stating that it would only allow a subscriber to receive a single cat every year. It also claimed it acknowledged the laws around pet adoption and claimed it was only acting as a “receiving agency” in case a given pet couldn’t stay in a given home.
It’s unclear when – and if – the Neko Hodai service will restart. If it does, the company says it’ll pick a different name for it.
This isn’t the first controversy regarding stray pets in Japan. A couple of years ago, UJ wrote about the controversies surrounding the “cat island” of Aoshima in Ehime Prefecture. The result of unchecked breeding, Aoshima became a popular tourist attraction – but also a danger for the cats who lived there. Animal activists across Japan have worked hard to create Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs to help limit such population overruns.
What to read next
The Legendary Cat Yokai of Odoriba Station, Yokohama
Sources
「ねこホーダイ」サービス停止 会員急増で「適切なサービス担保できない」ITMedia News
月額380円で猫を飼える「ねこホーダイ」サービス 環境省「実態の事実確認中」. TV Asahi News
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