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It might be all the catnip in the air, but it seems like cats are totally having a moment. A bunch of moments, to be exact.
Between LOLcats, Caturday, and the million and one Tumblr’s dedicated to feline photos, cats are beating us at the Internets right now. Or maybe it’s just that all the cat-lovers around the world finally have a medium for sharing all their glamour-puss shots. The only space that cats have yet to invade here in the U.S. is the offline urban haven, the cafe.
But apparently, they exist. I first heard of cat cafe’s through clothing company Madewell’s blog. Instantly, I imagined an American Starbucks, but instead of being packed with strollers, it would be crammed with people’s cats. But in fact, these cafe’s don’t serve latte’s and are more like Internet cafe’s in that patrons pay a cover to watch cats paw, pat, yawn meow and just generally hang out, being cats.. Wikipedia reports at least 39 cafe’s in Tokyo alone, and they’ve been around since the late ’90s (pre-meme days!). Leave it to Japan to be a decade in front of capturing an Internet meme in real life.
Because sure, sometimes, Fuck Yeah Cats just doesn’t cut it. And when you’re a city person with a rented apartment that doesn’t allow pets – even if you consider a cat a person, doesn’t mean your landlord has to – you have few options for logging in precious kitty time, besides befriending someone who has their own place and their own fluffy friend.
So who’s in for a parody of Beyonce’s “Cats Who Runs the World”? Oh yeah, and a field trip to Seoul’s doggie cafe, the “Bau House”?
