While it's not uncommon to have travel expenses reimbursed or even a portion of housing expenses covered (depending on your line of work) by some Japanese companies, Tokyo-based IT and system development company Ferray Corporation has distinguished itself among cat lovers with a special type of reimbursement for those who rescue cats--and bring them into work. It's called neko teate, or "cat compensation" or "cat allowance", and is a monthly fee paid on top of salary to employees to help cover expenses they incur while looking after their rescue feline work companion.

Back when the feline friendly company was started 19 years ago, an employee who took in a rescue cat brought it to work. Other employees apparently enjoyed working alongside the cat, and one by one began rescuing their own and taking them to work as well. Ferray decided to support the effort to rescue cats by providing employees who do so with an extra 5,000 yen a month as compensation so that employees could buy food and other necessities for their cat.

According to Hidenobu Fukuda, Ferray's CEO, while the cats create a playful and relaxing working environment, sometimes they cause welcome distractions by getting into trouble, and that that trouble allows employees to laugh together as a form of communication and form bonds. Although, Ferray has had to implement some fencing to keep the cats away from important devices, and keyboards and cables are particularly well guarded and even unplugged at times.

Ferray's homepage issues a deeper reason for being a company that is filled with rescue cats, however. A mission statement regarding the felines says that thousands of cats are euthanized in Japan each year, and that in order to forge a truly rich society, companies need to be more involved with the natural world around them--especially animals. So what started out as an employee bringing their cat to work slowly turned into a goal of providing homes for not so fortunate cats.

They're currently welcoming more cats and hiring, so you can expect one of the interview questions to be "So, do you like cats?"