“Do you think Meugh and Mewreen might start a cat café?” asked
Patch,” with a worried expression.
“A cat café? What on earth is a cat café?” inquired Paw.
“I know,” replied Lamont, as you would expect. “Patch and I saw a
comment by one of Meugh’s blog friends, BB Idaho who talked about them.”
“Yes,” added Patch. “You see not everyone wants to own a cat for
some strange reason and others are not allowed to have cats because their evil
landlords forbids pets in the dwellings they rent out. But these people still
need cat affection as all sensible humans should.”
“Right,” added Lamont. “Apparently this new form of
entrepreneurship developed in Japan because cats are often forbidden by
apartment owners denying their tenants access to warm fuzzy companions. Thus
cat cafes where cats run around freely and cuddle with customers to the benefit
of both species. To be perfectly accurate the first Cat Café was opened in
Taiwan in 1998 but they really took off in Japan where there are 150 of them
today.”
“Not only that,” continued Patch, “Several in this country have
seen this as an opportunity to hook up with animal shelters to provide cats and
amplify the adoptions possibilities. Brillant! Of course, they have to cut
through red tape and get variances from local laws banning critters from food
places but it can and has been done.”
“In our country,” added Lamont, there are two such cat cafes being
planned in the San Francisco Bay Area has two cat cafes. Kit’Tea in San Francisco
and Cat
Town Café in Oakland. Kit’Tea will be a halfway home for adoptable cats
has two shelters it has partnered with. Cat Town is intended to be an outreach
of Oakland’s Cat Town Shelter. Hopefully both of these will open this year.”
“Even the stodgy English has cat cafes,” continued Patch. “There is
Lady
Dinah’s Cat Emporium just east of the London’s financial district. Our
cuddly cousins help calm down those wired brokers and material tycoons. The tearoom,
named after Alice in Wonderland’s cat, charges their customers 5 pounds for two
hours of playtime with a cat. What a bargain. Tea, sandwiches, cakes and scones
are available as well. It opened in March this year as is booked through June.
Hey, we’re worth it. They have eleven cats that were given to them by folk
moving away and needed their cats looked after.”
“Oh my goodness,” said Paw. “You two sure are up on your cat cafes,
not to be confused with cat houses. But Patch’s original statement wondering if
Meugh and Mewreen might open one of these cat cafes bothers me. We are at heart
feral cats and we run and hide from everyone who comes near us aside from Meugh
and Mewreen. Well, there were those three large leprechauns from Seattle that
just would not let us be and forced us to be their friends; I guess they were
all right. But I’m not at all sure I want a lot of strange humans around
wanting to pet us.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Lamont with a smirk. “I don’t
think our servants are that ambitious. If one comes I know what to do.
I love this idea of a Cat Cafe - I had never heard of it before!
ReplyDeleteOur cat, Mikey, was a rescue cat who was discovered in a carboard box in a Walmart parking lot. After a trying kittenhood and extensive university
ReplyDeletemedical appointments, he had an eye removed due to incurable virus and has turned out to be a feisty household member. I had no sooner read about the cat café phenom, when I discovered he had gotten into the basement when we were out for dinner last night. That area is verboten
due to a huge model railroad. For an indoor cat, he managed to travel
from SE Idaho all the way to Cheyenne, tipping over railroad cars and a
water tower, leaping bridges and tunnels and creating quite a stir in a
stockyard. Of course he played innocent this morning and given the minimal damage, he was forgiven (with the understanding that the basement is still verboten). His qualification as a café cat, I'm afraid,
is minimal!