How cats might save one Japanese island

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People around the world love their pets. But on Japan's Tashiro Island, the people are outnumbered by just one kind of pet cats.

People around the world love their pets. But on Japan's Tashiro Island, the people are outnumbered by just one kind of pet cats.

Those cute little cats are like the hope of the entire island.

For hundreds of years, residents on this island made their living from fishing.

And, a good catch is believed to be the cats' blessings.

Tsuneo Endo, Local Fisherman, said, "The cats here have always been something like a lucky charm for us who bring good catch. We enshrine them because they are important to us."

For the cats, free meals are not the only thing that makes this place feel like heaven.

Dogs have been banned on this island for hundreds of years.

Within the past fifty years, the human population on the island has declined sharply.

It had one thousand people in the 1950s, but today there are less than a hundred. And most of them are above 70.