Cat cafés are coffee houses including a seperate room where customers are able to play with cats. They are particularly popular in Japan, perhaps due to many apartments forbidding pets, with Tokyo having between 30 and 40 such cafés.
At the request of Jerry Coyne, Japanese blogger Yokohamamama visited one of these cafés, the Neko Café Leon, and posted a report about her experiences.
Such cafés do not seem to exist in the West, but the popularity of petting zoos in Japan has meant that the Neko Café Leon has also opened a bunny room.
The cat pictured here is Leon, from where the Japanese café obtained it's name. He is a Scottish Fold – like Maru, Munchkin cat – having both curled ears and shortened legs.
Catfe! Cat Nip coffee, anybody?
I must say, cats should mass-migrate to Japan and Middle East; they seem to be most popular there.
Well the cats aren't actually in the food area but even if they were people who have pets have cats go in their kitchens. We don't allow our cats on tables but I was at a friend where his cats sit on the table and counters. They aren't full of diseases just waiting to get you.
No (I did own a cat for several years), but what about flees? Or the number of people who interact with the cats? There are a lot of people in Japan after all.
Well if the people don't have cats themselves they aren't very likely to pass something to the cats and cat diseases don't usually affect people. Parasites like fleas need to come from somewhere, and I don't claim to know what the flea situation is like in Japan, but here we get little sand fleas. I'm in the suburbs, with four cats that go outside freely, but we almost never get fleas (except sometimes in the summer) and they are easily treated. I was at a friend who lives right next to the beach and sand dunes and there are fleas everywhere there. The first two days were awful until I started using some repellent spray he had and they stopped bothering me at all.
It'd be nice if some of the humane societies in the US were able to open up coffee shops to draw in money, or form a partnership with a chain, and do this type of thing. That way, adoptable pets could get seen and played with, possibly find a home, and we'd have a support for the surplus of animals we have in the US. Win win?