How many cats are there on "Cat Island" Aoshima, Japan these days? Still a destination for "cat tourists" after the 2018 population control measures?

Question

Wikipedia's Aoshima, Ehime or Ao Island or "Cat island" says:

The feline inhabitants of Aoshima are fed by food donations from all over Japan. The cats also eat the small creatures of the island and some food from visitors.

The island is roughly 1 mile (1.6 km) long.[citation needed] It was formerly part of Nagahama in Kita District, but as of 2005, is part of Ōzu.

The human population has decreased since sardine fisheries depleted and jobs moved to cities. Currently only 6 human residents live on Aoshima.

and

In 1945, the island was a fishing village with a population of approximately 900. In 2013, the island was estimated to be home to 50 residents[citation needed]. In 2018, Ehime Shimbun reported that the population had decreased to 13 with an average age of "over 75". In 2019, Asahi Shimbun Globe reported that only 6 residents remained on the island.1 The island attracts tourists who visit the cats and give them food.

The feline population of the island has been reported as between 120 and 130 between 2015 and 2018.

In February 2018, it was reported by Ehime Shimbun that all cats on the island would be spayed or neutered in order to lower the feline population as a response to the declining human population. By October, 210 cats had been spayed and neutered, with another estimated 10 cats uncaptured that had been hidden by an old resident who opposed the program.

There are plenty of older YouTube videos of visits to Cat Island showing lots of cats who approach visitors to be petted and likely to be fed.

But now in 2022 is this still an attractive place for a traveller interested in the novelty experience of seeing so many cats? Or is the population naturally decreasing due to (cat) population control measures?

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Screenshot from Google Maps

Answer 1

This article from the March 2022 issue of "Stars & Stripes" implies that there are still a fair number of cats around. That said, the article doesn't include the sorts of pictures of hordes of cats that you'll see on older sources, so it's not conclusive. It's possible that there are fewer now than there once were; it's also possible that the photographer just didn't manage to capture a photo that included a particularly large number of cats.

In addition, the @aoshima_cat Twitter feed (in Japanese) appears to be run by a person who visits the island frequently. While @aoshima_cat does occasionally post pre-2018 photos, they usually seem to be labeled as such, and there are fairly recent posts such as this one from July 8 or this one from June 22 that show a fair number of cats (10+) in proximity.

Finally, the sources I've found online indicate that the life expectancy of a feral cat in a colony with a caretaker (which would seem to apply here) is roughly 10 years. One would not expect the colony to have died out entirely within 4 years of the spaying & neutering initiative, though it stands to reason that it may have declined in population.