In brief: over the week of August 3rd to August 10th CATNIP helped someone to rescue a mother cat and her 6 kittens at a site in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. The site is 2 hours away - a 4 hour round trip.

After 3 separate trips down to the site, all at night, mother and all the kittens are now at CATNIP. We got back with the last kitten at 5am on the morning of August 10th.

The mother cat has since tested negative for FIV/FeLV in a virus check, suggesting that the kittens too will test negative. The mother cannot be returned to the site so she will be rehomed. She weighs just 2.55kg.

So: we have seven cats to process, with attendant costs. All are in good health. The kittens are quite socialised.

It will cost 12,500yen/kitten to cover two vaccinations and bloodtest, plus 25,000yen for the mother to be spayed for rehoming, vaccinated and virus checked.

That is 100,000yen, plus the ongoing costs of food and so on.

We have launched an appeal: please help if you can.

Note: The person in Sasebo put their job - and more - on the line to help these cats. A tip of CATNIP’s hat to them.

Our first duty is to protect this person, along with the kittens. For this reason we will not discuss the exact location or post photos of the kittens at the site that might be recognised. Please do not speculate. Some parts of this report are deliberately vague.

In detail:

At around 9pm on the evening of Sunday 4th of August we received a request via our website to assist with some cats in Sasebo. The person believed the cats were in imminent danger. The situation sounded complicated.

We immediately responded that we would try to help. We briefly explained our euthanasia policy and our safeguarding/chaperone policies, and asked for more information.

It transpired that CATNIP would not have access to the part of the site where the cat and kittens lived. The person did have access, but was not sure whether they could trap them. We asked the person to investigate whether CATNIP might be allowed access.

The following day it became clear that CATNIP would not have direct access. The cats would have to be quietly trapped by the person, and carried 20 minutes or so past - prying eyes - to where CATNIP was parked. Nevertheless, we had the outlines of a plan.

Late on Tuesday 6th August we bounced down in the CATNIP Porsche with an assortment of traps, carriers and covers.

Between 10pm and 1am the person made 3 trips to the site. The mother cat and four of the kittens were slowly extracted in 1s and 2s, and transferred to carriers. At 1am we decided it was time to call it a night as the last 2 kittens were in hiding.

We told the person to try to try to trap them the following night, then to call us. We got back to CATNIP at around 3am.

Late on the 7th we got a call: one of the kittens had been caught, but not the other. So we bounced down to Sasebo again to collect it, getting home at 3:45am.

One kitten to go.

On the 8th, the trap didn’t close.

In the early hours of the 10th, we got a call that the last kitten had been caught. Our last trip down to Sasebo - home as dawn broke at 5am.

So: a successful rescue, albeit with a bit of driving involved.

We will sort out better / larger cages for the kittens in the next few days - they have all been de-flea’d.

We will process them as obon holidays permit. They are all in good health.

We will get them up on the website ready for rehoming soon.

Please do help if you can: this time of year is busy for us, and we are light on funds. To do these sorts of rescues, we do need your support.

[Thank you to Hui Lin, our Line Group chaperone.]