What Is It?
“Cat Island,” officially known as “Tashiro Island” is an island near Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture… and yes, to answer your one burning question… it’s covered in cats. Check out this Google Maps satellite view of the island.
In all seriousness, though, it can be accessed via ferry. You can get from Ishinomaki to Tashirojima (Cat Island). Here’s a big picture of Japan to see what area it’s in.
And if we zoom in, we can see Ishinomaki and Tashirojima and how close they are to each other.
When you go, you take an awesome little ferry, too. Sadly, not cat shaped in any way.
Apparently, cats on this island are way more populous than actual people on this island. There are approximately 100 residents on Cat Island, and most of them are over 70. One person is 37, and everybody else is over 60 years old. That’s a lot of old people, but luckily cats are here to save the day.
The modern people of this island are hoping that they can use the cats (coupled with a decent amount of media attention they’ve been getting) to attract people to visit, then eventually live there. If they don’t, then I’m afraid the island will look like a scene from Jurasic Park 2: Lost World, minus the dinosaurs with a few thousand cats thrown in.
It’s only been a couple years, but I guess it’s kind of working – a lot more tourists make their way to Cat Island to take pictures of cats, feed cats, pet cats, and all kinds of other things you can do with cats.
Basically, if you like cats, this is going to be your little Cat Mecca. Besides the cats themselves, there are other cat themed things you can take part in. For example, there’s a cat shrine:
Also, there’s cat shaped buildings…
and other things as well… Thing is, you can walk this island in a day if you wanted. It’s only about 8 square miles. Don’t go into any dark alleyways, though, you never know what a mob of cats might do to you.
Oh, and of course, dogs are strictly prohibited.
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