How much does it cost to keep a cat?

14 comments

1. I don’t currently have a cat in Japan, but I used to half joke that my salary should just go directly to the vet, then they could just send be back whatever was left.

2. It’s not much. If the cat is 100% indoors it’s just food and litter once you get past the initial vet costs. We buy food at about 1600 a month and litter around 3000 every couple months. We do keep some random soft pouch food we give on the weekends and dental treats, but those are minor in cost and optional. This is for two cats we’ve had since they were weaned.

   I don’t remember the costs, but the vaccines kittens get and getting them spayed/neutered felt cheap.

   I own my house, so no additional renters fee.

3. I brought my cat with me to Japan, I had to pay a full extra month deposit and it’s not refundable, I also pay 5000 yen more every month as my cat’s rent, litter is like 2000 yen per month and food around 5000 yen. I haven’t been on the veterinary clinic yet, only when we arrived but that was a government vet so it was free.

4. Spay is closer to 30,000jpy unless you’re living somewhere that has an agreement with a local vet. It’s serious surgery and is more expensive. Neuter is about right.

   But those are both 1 time expenses.

   I would also budget pet insurance. It takes 1 serious incident during the life of your furbaby to pay for it often many times over. And do you really want to be put in the position of having to make a medical decision for a family member because of the cost or would you rather know you have insurance to take care of it.

   Don’t forget initial fees. Unless you’re like me and enjoy absconding with some poor stray’s children to give them a life sentence of snuggles because they were illegally smol and to slow running away a basic adoption will normally run about 50,000. A pure bred cat from a breeder will be 100,000+. A pure bred cat from a store will be 250,000+. Depending on where you live pet-home.jp and jmty both have pet adoption listings that can be individuals or NGOs.

5. I looked around in Japanese and I found this survey about yearly costs.

   https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000100.000028421.html

   Cats are around 160 000 yens a year (including everything), so if you plan 13 000 yen a month for your cat, it should be alright, I think. You can probably afford it with only 10 000 yen a month by reducing costs here and there, but I would be sure I could afford things if the cat ends up needing special care.

6. Well, when my last cat turned 14, he developed kidney failure. So it was weekly to bi-weekly vet visits, and sub-Q fluids every day. He lived an additional three years (17) before it got bad enough that he had to be put out (couple of months back).

   That three-year run was over ¥1M in vet bills.

   Before that, it’s just litter and food. The occasional vet visit for a vax, and what not. Plus the original ¥2,500 to the rescue I got him from when he was 3.

   Oh yea… then there’s all the furniture he destroyed, and living with the same crappy couch because it’s pointless to buy a new one for them to destroy.

   Still worth it. So they’re generally cheap when they’re young, but budget/save for when they’re not.

7. Cats are awesome! Wanted to throw it out there that another thing to consider is potentially higher electricity costs, if you’re the type to turn off the AC when you’re not at home. With a cat you’ll need to keep your place at a comfortable temperature 24/7 throughout the year.

8. The real cost of owning a cat is the potential loss of sleep. Every night 🙂

9. Our cat costs us around 2000 a month in food, 1000 in snacks, 2000 in litter box stuff. The cat rescue paid for her spay (30000 yen, if I remember correctly) and initial vaccines and gave us a free cat carrier. Also, she hates getting her claws trimmed, so we get that done around once a month for about 500 yen at a nearby pet groomer. She repays us in a lot of snuggles and purrs.

10. My two cats were abandoned in Osaka nishinari in a box 📦. So I didn’t have to buy them.

    However I lost one of them last year to breast cancer, after 10 years of no real issues.

    Surgery was about ¥100,000 for a mastectomy (one sided) and chemo (declined) was very expensive (honestly I’ve forgotten the number).

    Up until that point they cost me next to nothing for ten years.
    Big bags of dried food from Costco ¥5,000 (10kg) and maybe 1,000 in litter a month plus wet food treats etc.

    If I knew then, what I do now, I’d have gotten pet insurance. A double mastectomy and full rounds of chemo may have given my cat a better chance of pulling through.

    Not to mention, the first vet did a total bodge job of the mastectomy. He used maybe 12-15 stitches and I took her to another vet who cleaned up the wound and restitched with what looked like 50 odd stitches.

11. Largest cost is the marginal rent.

    You’d be hard pressed to find any decent place in a large city, event if you’re prepared to pay 50% over the market rate. Instead you’d have to rent something 25 minutes from the station, which is like literally middle of nowhere, and the building is going to be old, like 50 years old.

12. Potentially an extra month’s rent as a pet-specific security deposit

13. I did not read all the comments so, I apologize if what I saw was already said.

    Check in your city hall about neutering the feral cats. We did that when we were living in Yokohama and we were able to go to a special vet specialized in ferals (not all vets would treat them), I think we paid 8,000 for the female cats, and then the city of Yokohama refunded us 5,000 per cat.

    In other cities I heard of “tickets”, that you can get for free neuterings.

    We imported our cats from our country so they were already adults when they came, and we did not sign up for insurance. That was an expensive mistake, as the oldest got cancer, went through a couple of surgeries, CT-Scans, etc.
    Now the second one is with special food and whatnot.

    When they get above 10 years old, vet cost comes into play and I think we are spending around 10,000 per month in vet cost only. On the other hand, the rescue feral cat we have just goes to her annual check up of less than 10,000 yen and she eats whatever food our cat is eating as she likes to eat the same.

    Food we are currently paying around 8,000 per month (kidney food), medication is around 6,000 per month as well, without counting the churu as we need to mix the medication there…

14. Yay for cat life! Good on you for doing the numbers too. Fingers crossed kitty has a long healthy life but just in case you might want to look into pet insurance for any major vet visits. Couldn’t tell you how much it is but it’s certainly not a huge expense.