Cat Cafe

In the cat/dog divide, I definitely come out on the side of cats but I'm not quite sure what to make of a cat cafe. I guess is says more about demographic trends in Japan than it does about a fondness for felines.

Only in Japan.

From Global Post...

“She’s the prettiest girl we have at our cafe. Everybody wants to touch her, but we ask that customers only do so if she doesn't resist you,” a waitress told me.

She didn’t resist. And since I was paying for the privilege, I leaned in and stroked her cheek. She was as lovely as the waitress had promised: a big-eyed, silky soft, compliant 2-year-old Russian Blue cat.

I was at Calico, one of Tokyo’s increasingly popular cat cafes, where customers seeking human and feline companionship pay to sip tea and stroke one of the 20-odd resident cats, representing 17 different breeds.

I first heard of Calico cat cafe when it opened in March 2007, but then it was an oddity and the preserve of lonely women and cat fanciers. It is now staggeringly popular. This March it opened a second branch in the high-rent Shinjuku business and shopping district. The original branch is so packed that reservations are recommended on weekends. Browsing in a bookstore, I found 39 establishments listed in the “cat cafe yellow page” section of a magazine.

All but three of the cats were asleep when I left the room full of adults vying for their attention, crawling on the floor with cat toys shaped like miniature fishing rods and brandishing their cellphone cameras. As I paid up, the cashier bowed and offered me a complimentary postcard-sized photograph of cats that had been made into a sticker.

It had been a bargain, albeit a strange one: An hour of commitment-free cat stroking cost me only $9.