The one minute intro...

... a word about us ...

We are a small Animal Welfare Non-Profit Organization - a charity. (Technically, an NPO法人).

We rescue and rehome stray and abandoned companion animals - currently mostly cats. We are also engaged in TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return/Rehome) projects in Fukuoka.

Our governing Board is a roughly equal mix of Japanese and foreign residents. We were founded by a Brit - Nick May - and his Japanese wife, Midori.

May is the organisation's Director.

We are based in Fukuoka, a city of 1.5 million in the south west of Japan.


We were officially founded in early 2014, although our roots go back 20 years.

Our Director has been in Japan - all of it around Fukuoka - for 31 years. We are trying to grow as slowly and cautiously as possible. We are in this for the long term.

Nobody involved with the NPO is paid.

We are supported solely by the contributions of supporters, and donations. We receive no money from any official sources.

We currently rely mostly on foster families caring for animals while we rehome them.

We do currently have some limited resources to accommodate animals ourselves - but we use this mainly to handle TNR animals and host animals we are currently working towards rehoming.


Cats - and Dogs...

We love dogs - and so do our supporters - but for practical reasons we have started with rehoming cats.

Dogs need more space than we have currently. They also need walking at least twice a day and more hands-on care. We will start rehoming dogs when we have foster families who can handle them.

There is a tsunami of need. We can only ever hope to be a small napkin, dabbing at the edge.

In the long term, our goals revolve around education and helping to change social attitudes.

We strongly advocate early-neutering - where available - vaccination and micro-chipping before rehoming

Rehoming animals is hard in Japan - particularly outside Tokyo. Too many people still want cute young kittens or puppies, pure bred if possible.


How you can help

We know that a lot of foreigners are hesitant to get involved in animal welfare issues in Japan - and we understand some of the reasons why that is.

Money isn't a magic wand - but it is a great enabler. It does help with the immediate problem - animals in distress - and long term issues like education and social-and-legal change.

The economics of rehoming animals can be challenging.

To vaccinate, microchip and neuter a healthy female kitten costs around 26000yen alone in vet’s fees.

We ask adopters to pay a rehoming fee of 20,000yen. We rely on supporters and ad-hoc donations to make up the shortfall. We do not get any money from the government.

As far as possible we do not take on an animal unless we have the spare capacity and we think there is a quarter-decent chance we can rehome it. Sorry - we have to be strict.

We do not have an "open door" policy - this is the only way to stop ourselves being swamped.

If you want to change this, become a supporter and help us financially.

To be blunt, your time is almost certainly worth far more to us if you do the job you are doing and donate one hour’s salary a month to us, than if you offer us that same time directly.


Currently, the main sort of volunteers we need are more foster families. But if you have experience rehoming animals, please get in touch.

We do need “Supporters”. This is a technical term under NPO law. If we have a sufficient number of “Supporters", we can attempt to get a rather more advantageous status (“Nintei” - if you know about such things) than we have currently.

Please see our “Giving” section for how to become a Supporter..

If you are based around Fukuoka and want to know more, our Director is happy to meet small groups of people in person to explain what we are about and where we are heading.


TNR (Trap, Neuter, Replace)

We are usually involved in several TNR projects in Fukuoka city at any time. This involves trapping feral cats, neutering/spaying them, and replacing them. The long term aim is to create a small, stable cat population of healthy animals, which can be embraced, or at least tolerated by the local community.


More...

As individuals, we love our cats and dogs dearly and - like you - cry salt tears when they pass on. But as an organisation, we are not sentimental.

We publish our accounts annually - they are audited by the prefecture - and are committed to full financial open-ness.

We have a whole raft of plans for the future - but we are not ready to talk about them now.

You can see our formal NPO registration with Fukuoka Prefecture at the link, bottom right, of every page.