Went to the Melbourne Cat Cafe yesterday with my sister. Cat cafes are apparently very popular in Japan, but so far I think it’s the only one of its kind here in Melbourne.
The “cafe” part of it was pretty misleading – because of the OHS restrictions you can’t really have a meal there. The food amounts to little more than tea and coffee, and the setup is nothing like a regular cafe. It’s basically an apartment for cats – you go up the winding stairs and there are about four rooms with couches and all sorts of cat furniture – towers, condos, scratching posts etc. etc. Maybe it should be called a cat library instead, because in one of the rooms there was a large bookcase with a pretty random selection: books on cats yes including popular internet favourites like the Grumpy Cat and the Oatmeal comics, but also… Wolverine, Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? It’s clearly run by a bunch of nerds, haha.
The apartment was populated with fourteen cats of various colouring and shapes, all looking healthy and well looked after. They paid no attention whatsoever to the human visitors; sure cats are not dogs and my own cat who’s known me for almost 17 years doesn’t react much when I come over (unless she wants a cuddle), but I think these cats were even more blase and oblivious to the constant stream of newcomers. Most of them were sleeping or napping with the exception of one gorgeous smoky-coloured cat called Winter who was very keen on playing; there were some of those fluffy-feathery cat toys scattered around, but what she seemed to be really interested in was chasing after a piece of string. Sometimes simple things are the best. For a feline she was hilariously uncoordinated – my sister tried to get her to chase the string across the cat tree and she took a tumble in the attempt.
We’ve spent a pleasant hour up there in a nice relaxed atmosphere, cooing over the kitties and playing with Winter. I’d happily take any of them home.
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