
Who Thought Cat Cafes Were a Good Idea? - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/todays-catty-question-who-thought-cat-cafes-were-a-good-idea-1515513369?mod=e2fb
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fellellor
Cats are amazing as long as you know what to expect and how to be around them.
People expecting smaller versions of dogs are in for some disappointment.

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Bromskloss
What's amazing about them, then?

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jhbadger
The attraction of cats is that you have a very slightly domesticated wild
animal. There is really something magical about interacting with an animal
that has a bit more agency than dogs who have been bred for millenia to be
servants to humanity.

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ianai
Exactly, and despite not being the most mentally capable cats exhibit very
intelligent tendencies. They can have endless curiosity and playfulness, but
also somehow still very lazy.

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TheOtherHobbes
We had to cat sit a few times over the last six months, and Cat World isn't an
easy place to understand.

Cats don't appear to have a good serial memory, so they can remember places
and times up to a point, but not quite well enough to integrate them into a
conceptual whole.

One cat was cute and sweet tempered, but also timid and really rather slow. We
eventually worked out that she couldn't make the connection between the
corridor that led to the kitchen in daylight, and the same corridor after
dark.

She acted as if they were two completely different and unrelated spaces. So
she had to timidly re-explore both every day, which caused non-trivial
confusion because some of the things in the corridor already had her scent on
them.

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ianai
Every cat is different. Some can be downright neurotic, just like us. They
also get senile in old age. I had the pleasure of growing into adulthood
alongside a cat. He died 2 months shy of 20. He taught me a lot.

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marojejian
I helped to found kitTea (kitteasf.com) here in SF. So... obvs I love the
idea. If anyone has any questions about cat cafes etc... AMA

One thing I will say from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is that is was soon
OBVIOUS that people loved the the idea and there was (some) demand.

I generally doubt that products market themselves & am skeptical of organic
growth stories. But this was a case that showed me there can be big positive
demand signals.

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JakiesKonto
"Who Thought Cat Cafes Were a Good Idea?" me ;) I remember I went nuts when I
found out there's this tea time place with loads of cats in London, it's
amazing.

Anyway if animals are used in therapy why that wouldn't work in other
environment.

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blueprint
Yes, I'll have a medium toxoplasmosis latte, please?

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sheepdestroyer
if they do not go outside they would be clean from toxo

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blueprint
ok, thanks for the assurances; I'll forward all insurance claims to you

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gkya
Around Istanbul cats everywhere are a common sight. There's the Kedi
documentary that was recently showing internationally that talks about them at
lenght. I can't read the article because of the paywall (and no I won't
subscribe for reading one single article, why these sites do not have the
option to buy access to one article only?---even though I'm not really that
interested in this particular one), but can kind of guess what it is about.
Cats in public spaces adapt very nicely and usually do not make any trouble.
They also attract many people, giving the cafe an image of a nice, cozy place.
If I was running a cafe, I'd definitely have a couple of them.

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a_t48
Can’t read the article because paywall, but the cat cafe I went to in Tokyo
was amazingly relaxing.

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tinus_hn
You aren’t missing much, it’s a totally useless fluff piece that is mostly a
list of things the writer could imagine going wrong with cat cafes, topped off
with some cat themed puns.

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thunderrabbit
> fluff

Thank you for your summary and likely inadvertent cat themed pun. ;-)

