Which Country Actually Loves Cats the Most? The Numbers vs. the Myth

Most people asked to name the world’s most cat-loving nation say Japan. By the one measure that actually settles it — the share of households that own a cat — the answer is Russia, and it isn’t close.

What the ownership data actually shows

By household cat-ownership rate, current estimates from Seasia Stats put the ranking like this:

1. Russia — around 59%
2. Romania — around 48%
3. Indonesia — around 47%
4. Philippines — around 43%
5. Thailand — around 42%
6. Poland — around 41%
7. New Zealand — around 41%
8. United States — around 37%
9. Latvia — around 37%
10. Hungary — around 35%

Japan doesn’t appear in this top 10 by ownership rate.

Why Russia tops the list

Russia’s 59% lines up with a documented institutional history, not just a folklore reputation:

• Cats have had an official job at the Winter Palace — now the Hermitage Museum — since 1745, when Empress Elizabeth of Russia ordered mouse-catching cats brought in from Kazan, a city known for producing particularly effective mousers. The population was wiped out during the WWII siege of Leningrad and rebuilt afterwards. Today roughly 70 cats live in the museum, looked after by a dedicated caretaker team; most are neutered to stop the colony overrunning itself, with a handful of intact cats kept back to maintain it. The museum’s own current sponsors list names Four Paws (Chetyre Lapy — not the international animal-welfare charity of a similar name) as a supporter. They have their own annual Hermitage Cat Day. (Wikipedia: Hermitage cats; Hermitage Museum’s official 2026 sponsors list)
• Separately, a January 2025 poll by VCIOM (Russia’s state public-opinion research centre) found 70% of Russians keep a pet, and cats are the clear favourite: 79% of pet-owning households have one, against 48% for dogs. (TASS, reporting the VCIOM data)

Romania, Poland, Latvia and Hungary also sit in the top 10, all Eastern European.

So where does the Japan myth come from?

Confusing cultural visibility with ownership rate. Japan has a genuinely disproportionate cat-related cultural footprint relative to its population — it’s just not the same thing as leading in cat ownership:

• Real cat islands where cats outnumber residents, Aoshima and Tashirojima among them.
• The maneki-neko (“beckoning cat”) figurine — a genuine, centuries-old lucky-cat tradition, not a modern marketing invention.
• Japan didn’t invent the cat café — the first opened in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998 — but it’s where the format exploded: Osaka in 2004, Tokyo in 2005, and 79 more across Japan by 2010, driven partly by rental leases that ban pets outright.

The takeaway

By ownership rate, Russia leads by a wide margin, with real institutional and cultural depth behind the number, not just folklore. Japan’s reputation is real too, just earned differently — through visible, exported cat culture rather than through households actually keeping cats. Small living spaces and pet-friendly housing rules shape cat ownership everywhere, not just in Japan — worth knowing if you’re weighing up a cat for a small flat yourself.