Posted on 03/23/2014 10:14:57 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Cat lovers will be able to enjoy a cup of coffee among their feline friends when Italy’s first ‘cat café’ opens in the northern Italian city of Turin on Saturday.
MiaGola Café, or ‘Café Miaow’, is the latest in a concept that started in Japan and has spread to Europe.
Patrons to the café on Via Amendola will also be able to enjoy specialities from the Piedmont region and a “sense of wellbeing” as their furry friends weave in between chairs, La Stampa reported.
Experts say that hearing the purr of the cat and caressing its soft fur can relieve stress and anxiety.
For the woman behind the venture, Andrea Levine, an American living in Turin, it is also a way of providing a home for abandoned cats and "teaching respect for animals", she told La Stampa.
"I wanted the café to launch with a message: we rescue cats in trouble," she added.
It comes hot on the heels of Italy's pet hotel, which opened near Milan last year.
MiaGola will also feature a video showing animals that can be adopted as well as an area for children to play with the cats and learn more about the animal world.
Cat cafes are hugely popular in Japan, where over 100 grace the streets of Tokyo. The craze also spread to China and Taiwan before reaching Europe, with the first to open in Austria.
Café des Chats opened its doors in Paris last year.
The much-anticipated Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium also opened in London earlier this month, with tables booked up months in advance.
Time for a kitty ping, Italian food style!
I love my cats, but they are best left at home with their litter boxes.
Breaking ! Kiteasf.com
And not to forget the US...once those pesky health codes get worked out...the first cat café in the U.S. may open its doors in San Francisco as early as this summer! Unlike Lady Dinah’s which serves primarily as a permanent home for rescued cats, KitTea hopes to facilitate adoptions. Which means an exciting twist: lots of kittens !Go cat go !!!
A cat café? They step in their litter box and then walk on your table...plus cat hair in the food. What a fabulous concept!
Yet they still probably offer less harmful germs than you do:-)
We have that at home. Why go out for it?
Although I don’t know Teddy, I assume he doesn’t do “movements” where he eats...Teddy?
I hope I get the chance to visit a cat cafe someday. Might not want to leave, though.
I wouldn’t leave either.
Lets own one!
Half of the cafes closed here when the smoking ban came, now if this gets started i guess the rest of them will close.
Wouldn’t that be fun??
Who wrote anything about “movements”? I referred to germs. Cold germs, flu, all sorts of communicable diseases. Cats are remarkably clean animals. Humans, sometimes not so much.
Post 7.
I meant it in a joking fashion.
Me too. I do think however people done really think about the world around them much. How much skin does a human shed around their household, for example. How much bacteria and germs are present around us all the time. Yet a cat’s paws stepping in kitty litter and then on the tabletop is an EPA worthy bio hazard!!
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