Wednesday, February 17, 2010

LONELY KITTEN CAFE


This is something of a sad story…

“Cat cafés are huge in Japan right now. As the name suggests, these are coffee shops where cat lovers go to sip overpriced lattes and hang out with an adorable smoosh pile of kitties. In the past five years, exactly 79 such cafés have popped up all over Japan. What’s weird is that the café cats aren’t expensive pedigreed felines like Persians or those other ones with the funny bendy ears, they’re just the everyday mixed breeds you might find in the back lot of your local supermarket, cats who, in the immortal words of Brian Setzer, “slink down the alley, looking for a fight/Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night.” Likewise, in the past few years, there’s been an explosion of photo books and DVDs featuring average-joe cats. If people are so fascinated by what are essentially domesticated alley cats, why don’t they just swoop one up from the legions of strays all over Japan and take them home? I’ll tell you why: because landlords in Japan are dicks. Thirty-eight-year-old Norimasa Hanada, the owner of Neko no mise (Shop of Cats), Tokyo’s first-ever cat café, explains the problem: “Most Japanese rental apartments prohibit pets. The only ones that allow them are condominium apartments for families. This means that young, single-dwelling workers in their 20s and 30s can’t even think about getting any pets, despite the fact that they’re stressed out and are seeking comfort and companionship of some kind.” (Click here for more.)

Click here for Gene Vincent

The secret words are Hello and Kitty

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

To counteract the sad, here's some happy...

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/81035-joe-the-plumber-tears-into-john-mccain

WV = podangra

Graeme K Talboys said...

Ah. They've been reading Charlie Bone.

butlincat said...

i hate sheeple who owns REAL cats.

Anonymous said...

You need to get off your high horse sometimes butlincat.