All in all, it's a touch of French elegance on British screens. I am at a disadvantage with Japanese adverts since I cannot read Japanese. Cat food seems to be less heavily advertised in the Australian mags compared to the great number of competing brands which advertise in British and American mags. Despite the horror stories of discarded or neglected animals, the keeping of cats as pets, rather than utilitarian animals, has boomed in Japan since the 1980s. The number of pets and the number of pet-owning households are increasing year by year with an 10 million pet dogs and 7 million pet cats.
Animals provide a sense of companionship.
Japanese cats were traditionally fed on leftovers such as fish heads or mashed fish and leftover rice, plus of course any food they caught for themselves. The concept of commercial cat food appeared at first to be an extravagance in Japanese eyes. However, as imported pet foods arrived on the market, Japanese owners' fondness for convenience and for their pets combined with the increase in living standards and rising incomes made the use of commercially prepared pet foods more realistic. The world's first pet food appears to have been a dry biscuit in Britain in around 1860. Canned and dried meat pet foods appeared in the 1930s.