Fed up with long working hours, minimal job security and paltry remuneration in Japan's depressed economy, maneki neko cats all over Japan are going on strike.
"I don't know where the hard-working, beckoning cat image comes from," said one battery-enhanced cat who agreed to be interviewed while on the job, sitting near a cash register inside a local store. "If you look at most felines, all they do is lie around and sleep. Believe me, the last thing cats are interested in is profits."
The cats, many of them immigrants from China, have been working their whole lives in restaurants and shops in Japan while suffering in silence. And although they once made a decent living by bringing in luck and profits for their Japanese bosses, these days they're finding it harder and harder just to make ends meet.