Calico Cat Café

Japan’s capital city can be a tough place for a cat lovers to live. Small apartments, long work hours and restrictive housing codes make it difficult for Tokyoians (Tokyoites? Tokyoids?) to keep cats at home. No wonder then that the city is seeing an increasing number of cat cafes—lounges where the felineless can drink coffee and find some catisfaction. Tokyo has seven different cat cafes that we know of (and there are probably many more than that). Here’s a look at our three favorite:

Two dozen or so cats purr, scratch and pounce upon plastic mice within the confines of the comfy, lounge-like Calico Cat Cafe. Customers pay ¥800 yen (~US$9) an hour, or ¥2,000 yen for three hours, for the right to be there. Once inside, they can play with the cats, order food or drinks (a cat-puccino perhaps?) or simply hang out in a comfy chair.

When the Calico opened in early-2007 it was little more than an oddity and a refuge for crazy-cat-ladies-in-waiting. Since then the concept has gone mainstream. It is now so popular that the Calico Cat Cafe has opened a second branch and is considering a third. On weekends it is so packed—families, old women, and couples on first dates are especially previlent—that the poor cats seem rather overwhelmed with all the attention.

If you are wondering: The entire cafe (as well as the cats themselves) are kept meticulously clean the cafe’s six air filters and by the Calico’s small army of “feline staff” that have themselves become something of an attraction. There’s even a bestselling coffee table picture book dedicated to the workings of the Calico’s cat minders.

If you go: Be aware that you can touch, but not pick up, the cats wearing the handkerchiefs. Also, both Calico Cat branches are packed on weekends—for Saturday and Sunday afternoon visits reservations are virtually required.







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