StemCell Therapy

Coffee with a calico? Tea with a tabby? Or just want to unwind with a feline?

Enter the cat caf.

Its an idea that apparently started in Asia and then spread to Europe. Now its come to the United States as an engaging way to find permanent homes for cats and kittens.

The first cat caf in the U.S. was a temporary one in New Yorka four-day collaboration that took place last April between North Shore Animal League America and Purina ONE. Cat lovers had the chance to sip complimentary "cat'achinos" while visiting with 16 cats up for adoption. Fourteen of the cats were adopted by the end of the event with the remaining 2 finding homes within the month.

Now permanent cat cafs are opening, working with health code laws by keeping food preparation areas separate from the cat areas.

The first permanent U.S. cat caf, Cat Town Caf at 2869 Broadway in Oakland, Calif., opened in October. Its an expansion of the work of Cat Town, a nonprofit cat rescue, to find homes for cats being held by Oakland Animal Services.

Adam Myatt, known as the Cat Man of West Oakland because of his feral cat calendars, opened the caf with Cat Town founder and friend Ann Dunn. Split into a caf and cat zone to work with health code laws regarding food preparation areas, Cat Town Caf allows 14 people every hour to observe and play with cats.

The limit on the number of people, says Myatt, is to prevent stressing the cats who might face up to 154 people per day, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days per week.

Near the end of the first month of operation, 30 cats had already found new homes, says Myatt.

[Cat Town Caf is] doing pretty well, he noted. Its been a process to see which cats are going to do best in this space. A cat caf is not for every cat. It has to be one that can handle meeting hundreds of people.

The hardest part, he says, is curbing peoples expectations. Cat activity varies, as cat lovers know, he says.

Cats sleep a lot and dont always want to play, so some people might be disappointed. But if visitors really want to interact, we recommend that they reserve a time in the morning when the cats are super playful, ready to go crazy, or around 5 or 6 p.m. when they start getting active again.

We dont have Wi-Fi or a ton of seating. Most of the space is the cat zone. Its not a caf you would try to work in or bring your laptop to. But we do have great coffee and bagels and sell T-shirts, and were really trying to make this a super-fun, magical space for cats.

In San Francisco, cat enthusiasts Courtney Hatt, David Braginksy, and Benjamin Stingle are getting ready to open KitTea, part gourmet tea house, part cat and human oasis, at 96 Gough Street in late March.

Its been a lot of work after starting with a complete blank slate. There was a lot of construction and customization to cover, as well as permits, the cost of San Francisco, very busy contractors in a fast-growing city, and trying to dot all of the i's and cross all of the t's, says Hatt.

How will it work when it opens?

You will enter KitTea through a vestibule that keeps the tea and cats separate and be greeted by a friendly host/hostess who will take your order. From there you will walk into the cat/human oasis and be alerted once your tea and/or snacks are available for pickup at the hostess desk.Due to strict health regulations, no employee of KitTea can serve you tea or snacks in the space due to the risk of cross contamination in the two spaces.

If you choose to only come to KitTea for the tea, says Hatt, you can take a seat in our tea space. There you can view all the happenings in the cat area through a glass partition while you relax and learn about Japanese tea service.

KitTea is working with Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue, providing a space where the rescue can house its adoptable cats and thus make more room for rescuing other cats in California and across the U.S.

How do these operations help adopt cats?

At shelters, Hatt explains, cats who are scared will often come off as aggressive, aloof, and, in general, completely different from who they really are.

In these cafs, she says, the cats are going to be far less stressed than they would be in a shelter situation.

Follow this link:
I'll take my coffee with a cat | AAHA

This entry was posted on April 21, 2019 at 9:49 am and is filed under Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |