This is a translation provided for convenience. The Japanese text is the operative version.

Companion Animal Trust, Nippon ("CATNIP") recognises the importance of the personal information entrusted to us. We comply with Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information and related legislation, and handle personal information as set out below.

1. Who we are

Name: NPO Companion Animal Trust, Nippon
Address: 1-11-16 Ohashi, Minami-ku, Fukuoka 815-0033, Japan
Representative: Nick May (メイ　アリスダー　ベンジャミン　ニコラス)
Corporate number: 2290005014849

2. Why we collect information

(1) People applying to adopt or foster

Assessing whether an animal and a home are a good match, and checking the living environment
Arranging home visits, meetings and correspondence
Entering into and performing adoption or fostering agreements
Checking on the animal's welfare afterwards, and supporting you with its care
Microchip registration and transfer of registration
Liaising with a veterinarian where the animal's health or welfare requires it

(2) Donors and supporters

Receiving donations, processing payments, issuing receipts
Accounting and record-keeping required by law
Activity reports, thanks and other correspondence
Inviting further support for our work

(3) Volunteers

Arranging and coordinating activity
Responding to emergencies during activity

(4) People who contact us

Answering your enquiry and keeping a record where necessary

(5) People named by applicants

Adoption and fostering applications may ask about someone other than the applicant — for example, the person who will have day-to-day care of the animal. We use this only for the purposes in (1) above.

(6) People involved in TNR and community cat work

Arranging trapping, neutering and return
Understanding the site and how feeding and cleaning are managed
Discussions with landowners, residents' associations and others involved
Keeping records of neutered cats and the people who care for them
Applying to local authority schemes where we use them

3. Health information

Our adoption and fostering forms ask whether anyone in the household is allergic to cats or dogs. Under Japanese law this is "personal information requiring special care". We use it only to judge whether a placement is suitable, and for no other purpose.

If you are answering about family members, please make sure they agree to your doing so. We do not record which individual is affected.

4. Sharing with others

We do not share personal data with third parties without your consent, except as required or permitted by law. The exceptions are:

Reporting to municipal animal welfare authorities or the police where there is a clear animal welfare concern, and where obtaining consent is not practicable
Registering owner details with the designated microchip registry, as required by the Act on Welfare and Management of Animals
Providing owner details to a veterinarian where needed to treat the animal
Sharing what is necessary with landowners, residents' associations or the local authority in order to carry out TNR — with the person's agreement

5. Service providers and processing outside Japan

We use the following providers, who handle personal data on our behalf:

Provider	Purpose	Where handled
Stripe, Inc.	Payment processing	United States
Google LLC	Email	United States
Anthropic PBC	AI assistance with translation, drafting and administration	United States
Akamai Technologies (Linode)	Web server	Japan
Akamai Technologies (Linode)	Mail server	United Kingdom
LY Corporation	LINE messaging	Japan

For providers in the United States, we rely on their having established arrangements meeting the standards set by the Personal Information Protection Commission. We will provide information about our checks on request.
The United Kingdom is designated by the Commission as having protections equivalent to Japan's.

6. How long we keep things

Applications that do not proceed: one year from application
Records of completed adoptions: the animal's lifetime, plus one year
Applications raising a serious animal welfare concern: name, date and a brief note only
Donation records: as long as required by law and by the certified-NPO rules
Enquiries: one year after the matter is closed

Data is deleted at the end of these periods. Copies held in backups are removed as those backups expire, within 90 days.

7. How we protect it

Organisational: access to personal data is restricted to the representative. Handling is reviewed periodically.
Personnel: everyone taking part in our activities, including volunteers, signs a confidentiality undertaking.
Physical: equipment holding personal data is controlled, and paper records are kept in a lockable place.
Technical: server access is by SSH public-key authentication only, with password authentication disabled. The management system requires a password. Backups are taken using our hosting provider's service and held within their managed environment.
Personal devices: we use LINE to stay in touch with volunteers and others, and it is used on their own phones. We ask that those devices carry a screen lock. We recognise that such devices may back up automatically to consumer cloud services such as iCloud, and we limit the resulting risk by asking that photographs and documents relating to our activities are not kept on personal devices longer than needed.
AI assistance: we use an AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude) to help with translation, drafting and administration. We have turned off the setting that would allow what we enter to be used for model training.
Overseas conditions: we take account of the data protection regimes in the countries listed in section 5.

8. Your rights

You may ask us to tell you the purposes for which we hold your data, to disclose it, to correct, add to or delete it, to stop using or erase it, to stop providing it to third parties, or to disclose records of third-party provision.
Please email the contact below. We will verify your identity and respond without delay. There is no charge.

9. Contact and complaints

Companion Animal Trust, Nippon — personal information enquiries
Attention: Nick May
Email: npocatnip@gmail.com

10. Changes

We may revise this policy if the law changes or our practices change. Any revision will be published on this page.

Effective: August 2nd 2026