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Cat Cafés: a global phenomenon

25 November 2015

By James

Over the last few months, it seems as though the trend for ‘cat cafés’, where the customers can watch and play with a number of resident cats, has reached a new height, and it seems that for once Newcastle is the UK’s centre of such a trend, with two extremely successful cafés. Willow Cat Café and Mog on the Tyne have both opened within the last two years and are enjoying remarkable success.

Cat cafés originally came into existence in Taiwan in the late 1990s, where they allowed young professionals living in apartment blocks where pets were not allowed to enjoy animal company for a price. Since then, though, Japan has taken up the title of the world centre of cat cafés, with at least seventy-eight of the businesses opening up in the five years between 2005 and 2010.

A few months ago, a series of ‘cat cafés’ were shut down due to the fact that the animals were being neglected (owing to the fact that there were so many of them being cared for by staff officially employed in catering) and were suffering from the stress of being petted by hundreds of people every day. Unusually, the country which seems to take the cats’ welfare most seriously is the United States, where the cats are usually boarders from a local animal shelter and are all available for adoption (both of Newcastle’s cat cafés are the same), but many have questioned in any event whether the practice of keeping animals indoors and flooding their environment with strangers is a breach of animal welfare.

However, that doesn’t seem to have stopped the trend expanding outwards as far as Mexico and New Zealand. And no longer is the only animal offered the cat: various cafés in the world offer rabbits, micropigs and even goats for their customers.

But not just businesses are harnessing the therapeutic properties of cuddling an animal. Brunel University offers its students the opportunity to de-stress by relaxing with a rabbit, and various other institutions around the country have ‘puppy rooms’ for the same purpose. And, if the animals are treated well and are happy, I don’t see any reason why anyone should stop this innovative and interesting business model which is making its impact around the world.

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