More than just a fun day out, cat cafés provide a new and exciting way for shelters to match cats with their "forever homes". The resident cats come from local animal shelters and are available for adoption - visitors to cat cafés can get to know animals in a friendly, relaxed environment to decide whether they would like to adopt in future.
Cat cafés, while being a relatively new concept in many Western countries, have existed in countries such as Japan and Taiwan since the late 1990s and early 2000s. The world's first cat café ("Cat Flower Garden") opened in 1998 in Taipei, and soon grew to be an international tourist attraction.
Although cat cafés have great potential to improve the lives of rescue cats, cat cafés also have to balance their business aims with the welfare of their resident cats. A number of UK animal protection charities have expressed concern about the cat café trend, with a café in Leicester being shut down in 2015 due to serious hygiene issues. With an absence of regulation or guidelines, the onus must be on café owners and staff themselves to ensure that cats are well looked after. Some potential measures include:
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