Step Inside a Cat Café
Purr-fect cafés are booming
Yoda enjoys a life of leisure. From the comfortable vantage point of a friendly lap, the hairless Sphynx cat surveys the room. There’s Doudou, lying in a hammock in the window and chattering away. Doudou loves to talk to herself. A couple of humans, a male and a female, sit close by, listening attentively as if they can understand what she’s saying. Yoda laughs to himself. These humans who come to visit – they love us so much, but have no idea what we really think!
What else is going on? On one of the tables a female human has a large glass of milk with cream on the top. Yoda licks his lips. He may go and check that out shortly. He knows he’s not supposed to touch their food, but cream can be so hard to resist.
Then Yoda spots Mouchou high up on a shelf. He’s taking a keen interest in a human below with a big pile of paper next to her. Not to mention a very inviting bag. It will be irresistible to Mouchou. Typical youngster, he loves playing games. Yoda yawns again and scratches his pink chest. Maybe time for another nap…
IT’S A FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT CHAT MALLOWS CAFÉ in Paris, and the dozen or so tables are beginning to fill with customers. They enter quietly, whispering. The rules say to keep the noise down. Some of the 16 cats that live here are sleeping and they’re not to be disturbed.
The customers are predominantly female, although there are some mixed couples. At a table by the window, Chloé Lardy and Maxime Lamoureux are cooing over a purring ball of fluff in a hammock. It’s Chloé’s third visit here. She loves cats she says, and has two at home. For Maxime, it’s his first time. When he was a child he was frightened of cats he says, but now it’s OK.
At another table, Clémence Fontaine is also looking nervous, but for a different reason. A furless Sphynx cat with bat-like ears has jumped onto her table and is eyeing her cream-topped milkshake. Lashings of cream are a speciality here, especially on the exotic desserts that are named after the resident cats: Délice Doudou, Délice Mimi and the like. It’s Clémence’s second visit. “I like it because it’s cosy and I love cats,” she says.
At the table opposite, Dr Pauline Delahaye, a specialist in animal semiotics at Sorbonne University, has a pile of folders on her table and is busy making copious notes on a book titled Mimicry and Meaning: Structure and Semiotics of Biological Mimicry.
“I’ve been here four or five times,” she says. “People have to speak in a low voice because of the cats, so it’s a quiet place to work. And you can eat and drink here, so it’s better than being in the library. When I moved to Paris, I couldn’t bring my cat, unfortunately. I’m used to having a cat near me when I work, so it’s nice for me to work here.”
Dr Delahaye’s work concerns emotional expression in animals. So can she offer any insight into what the cats are thinking right now? “In my field we have a saying: the cat for the behaviourist is like the platypus for the biologist – we know it exists, but we don’t understand how. What are they thinking now? Right now, they are thinking, I can make this little bag my house,” she laughs, as a big furry cat tries to make its way into her handbag.
IMAGES OF CATS ARE EVERYWHERE, and if there’s a vaguely Japanese ‘Hello Kitty’ feel to the place, it’s no coincidence. Although Taiwan can lay claim to the world’s very first cat café with Cat Flower Garden, which opened in 1998, it was in Japan that the craze really took off. In a country where people often don’t have the space or time to look after their own pets, the possibility of spending time with cats in a café setting proved hard to resist.
In the last ten years, more than 150 cat cafés have opened in Japan, with more than 40 in Tokyo alone.
And now the rest of the world is catching cat café fever, with new establishments opening almost weekly from Wellington to Washington and from Stockholm to Sydney. As well as in Paris – not to mention the rest of Europe.
“In France we all love cat s,” says Lauranne Bohère, the assistant manager at Chat Mallows Café, which opened in 2015. “Cats are relaxing animals and this is a calm place where it’s easy to relax – and that is good for French people because we tend to stress a lot, especially in Paris!”
She cites a theory that the vibrations of a cat’s purring have a calming and beneficial effect on humans. It’s known as ‘ ronron thérapie’ (purr therapy).
Lauranne helps to prepare the food, waits on tables and looks after the cats. It’s her dream job. “I’ve loved cats since I was four years old,” she says. “My home is not far from here, so when I heard about it, I thought, ‘I have to work there!’ I have my own cat at home, and he is jealous. He smells my clothes when I get home and looks at me as if to say, ‘Oh,
you’ve seen other cats apart from me.’ The cats here aren’t mine, but I love them.”
CHAT MALLOWS CAFÉ was not the first cat café to open in the French capital. That honour goes to Le Café des Chats, which opened in 2013.
It was founded by Margaux Gandelon, a political science and international relations graduate who wanted to put some sense of meaning into her working life and whose twin passions were animals and cooking.
She’d heard of Japan’s cat cafés, but wanted her own establishment to be more of a restaurant than a café. It offers traditional dishes made on the premises. The setting is shabby-chic bohemian and it could be a typical Parisian brasserie were it not for the dozen cats that make it their home.
As a cat café pioneer in France, Margaux had her struggles. First, she needed to establish that the presence of pets in a restaurant was actually legal. “I had to wait for an official reply from the Ministry of Agriculture before I could be absolutely certain,” she says, smiling.
Next she had to deal with animal welfare worries. She received many visits from members of France’s animal protection societies. “They didn’t
know me and wanted guarantees that the cats would be well treated,” she says. “They left reassured.”
The wellbeing of the animals is of primary importance. As at Chat Mallows Café, strict rules are enforced at Le Café des Chats. Customers must use hand sanitiser when they arrive and they must obey three cardinal rules: don’t wake the cats if they’re asleep, don’t feed them and don’t use flash photography.
The cats are chosen for their sociability, but importantly they have their own room – where customers are not allowed – if they want solitude.
All the cats at Le Café des Chats are rescue cats, and each has a story. Lucky, for instance, is a grey Chartreux who was found in a parking lot. Manager Florent L’Hommée thinks he was perhaps abandoned by an illegal breeder, because his movement is not quite right. Lucky loves climbing, so he’s in his element at Le Café des Chats with its many high-level shelves that allow the cats to survey their domain.
But sometimes a cat can get tired of life at the café. “You’ll notice a change in their mood, and they’ll start sleeping more,” says Florent. When this happens, they’ll be homed by a member of staff or one of the café’s regular customers. Once they’re part of the cat family, they’ll always be looked after.
TODAY, THE TROUPE IS BUSY entertaining its latest visitors. “We’ve come because we love cats and we thought it would be interesting to see the concept,” says Marjorie Richard, who is visiting Paris with her daughter and enjoying a coffee and the company of a Siamese.
“It’s nice that it makes people speak to each other,” she adds, highlighting another key feature of cat cafés: they bring people together.
As Florent puts it, “You hear a lot of languages here – people come from all over the world. But while they’re here, they’re all part of a single community. Everyone comes for the cats.”
With their sense of communion and atmosphere of hushed reverence, is it going too far to suggest that cat cafés have something in common with church? Maybe not. After all, the Egyptians worshipped a cat goddess. Just ask Yoda, he is a Sphynx after all.