[CAT] "To Spur Adoptions, an Oakland Cafe Puts Cats Among the Patrons"
The New York Times' Carol Pogash describes a cat café in the California city of Oakland that also helps place cat in new homess.
The Cat Town Cafe & Adoption Center, which opened in late October and has arranged 52 cat adoptions so far, claims to be the first permanent cat cafe in the United States. Customers line up for locally brewed strong coffee, handmade bagels and “vegan fig nut pop tarts” (the proprietors clearly know their audience). When it is time to visit the cat zone, visitors push through glass doors to another world of lounging cats, all of them candidates for adoption. There are no cages.
Cat cafes are well established in Japan, where there are also owl cafes and penguin bars. There, customers are typically people who need their cat fix, because many apartment buildings in Japan do not allow cats; few cafes serve as adoption centers.
In the United States, there have been fitful efforts to establish similar businesses in various cities, but health department rules against keeping animals in the same place where food is served have gotten in the way. Demand, however, is fairly obvious: A pop-up cat cafe in New York City, open for only a few days this year, drew an almost comically long line of customers and high level of attention online.
So cat-loving entrepreneurs here have largely ditched the Japanese model in favor of a charitable one that separates the cats from the food and emphasizes adoption. Since Cat Town opened here in Oakland, cat cafes have sprung up in Denver and in Naples, Fla. On Monday, the first permanent cat cafe in Manhattan - Meow Parlour, at 46 Hester Street - opened, started by the owners of Macaron Parlour, a pair of Manhattan bakeries.
The Cat Town Cafe & Adoption Center, which opened in late October and has arranged 52 cat adoptions so far, claims to be the first permanent cat cafe in the United States. Customers line up for locally brewed strong coffee, handmade bagels and “vegan fig nut pop tarts” (the proprietors clearly know their audience). When it is time to visit the cat zone, visitors push through glass doors to another world of lounging cats, all of them candidates for adoption. There are no cages.
Cat cafes are well established in Japan, where there are also owl cafes and penguin bars. There, customers are typically people who need their cat fix, because many apartment buildings in Japan do not allow cats; few cafes serve as adoption centers.
In the United States, there have been fitful efforts to establish similar businesses in various cities, but health department rules against keeping animals in the same place where food is served have gotten in the way. Demand, however, is fairly obvious: A pop-up cat cafe in New York City, open for only a few days this year, drew an almost comically long line of customers and high level of attention online.
So cat-loving entrepreneurs here have largely ditched the Japanese model in favor of a charitable one that separates the cats from the food and emphasizes adoption. Since Cat Town opened here in Oakland, cat cafes have sprung up in Denver and in Naples, Fla. On Monday, the first permanent cat cafe in Manhattan - Meow Parlour, at 46 Hester Street - opened, started by the owners of Macaron Parlour, a pair of Manhattan bakeries.