Cats + cafés = happy Connie.

Taiwan, ,

A few weeks ago, I became much more excited about going to Taipei for two weeks during my internship and being separated from Steve during that whole time, mostly thanks to the fact that I had read a Lonely Planet article about all the cat cafés in Taipei. It’s actually pretty awesome how many cat cafés I’ve been to in Asia now: the first two we visited were in Tokyo and Bangkok, respectively, both during our original circumnavacation. I’ve now added three more to the list, all in Taipei, and a more detailed report is due! Friends and family will know that I adore dogs, and our corgi-mix Stella is pretty much the thing I love most in the world. But I was first and foremost a cat person, pretty much from the cradle. My family had cats when we were in China, and had more after we came to the States. It’s thus fitting to get crazy about cats again when I come back to Asia!

Cat cafés are a relatively recent phenomenon. The very first cat café, called Cat Garden, opened in Taipei in 1998 and has since been renamed Cats and Café 1998. Thus, cat cafés are actually a Taiwanese invention! However, they’re most popular today in Japan, which people theorize is because there’s very limited space and it’s hard to have pets. Oh, and also that the Japanese are crazy about cats. Hello? Other than having cats, these venues also differ from regular cafés in that they often have an entry requirement or a minimum spending requirement. In Japan, the cat cafés we visited stipulated that you had to spend a certain amount of money (like 500 yen) for a cover charge to stay for a certain amount of time, but it did usually come with a beverage. In Taiwan and the cat café we visited in Bangkok, there is usually a minimum spending requirement, ranging from 120 to 200 NT. That’s usually the price of a drink, which is astronomical compared to what they can usually cost – 20-30 NT! It’s to deter people from coming in just to gawk and take pictures of cats, without spending a penny. I used the Lonely Planet article and another article from City543 to plan for a list of cat cafés…

I decided to go to my first cat café here after the first day of work. I took a bus just ten minutes west to Minimal Café, near National Taiwan University. According to its Tripadvisor reviews, people had a good time here, though some also thought the café was a bit smelly and unhygienic. I decided that everyone was right. It was a great café, sparsely populated on a weekday evening, and full of cats – I counted between 6 and 10 cats roaming around and sleeping in baskets and lounging on the shelves. There were literally cats everywhere. In fact, there were several cats on the counter where drinks were being served – a few sprawled out, one curled up on the sound system, and one asleep with its head in a box of mugs. I thought it was just smelling something there and stuck its head in, but when I went to pet it, I found the cat sound asleep with its head in the mugs. That’s really what people meant by unhygienic – they do let the cats everywhere they please, including behind the counter, so if you’re antsy about that, best not to visit. Everything else was pretty awesome, though. I fired up the laptop and wrote a few things and read a book while cats walked around and made themselves at home. At one point, I left my computer to go pet a cat near the front of the café, and found that on my return, two cats had chosen to colonize my table. It was glorious being able to play with them! I paid 120 NT (4 USD) for my earl grey milk tea, and left to get a quick dinner before I went home.

For my second visit, I chose the mother of all cat cafés: Cat Flower Garden, now also known as Cats and Café 1998. The cat café where it all started is still at its same location, right off the Zhishan MRT stop on the red line in Shilin. For this evening, I was joined by Kara, of Kara and Ken, friends of Steve’s family who recently moved to Taipei from Greenville. Kara has a great sense of humor, and also loves animals, so we had a great time at Cat Garden. I didn’t anticipate its surroundings, which was very much like a routine restaurant, with tables and chairs, instead of low-slung armchairs and sofas, but it made a lot more sense. When they first conceived of a cat café, they simply added cats and dogs to their pre-existing restaurant. Currently, Cat Flower Garden has six or seven cats as well as three dogs: two younger white dogs and an aging golden retriever. You can tell the owners truly love their pets a lot – when a car came by blasting loud music that everyone inside could hear, the dogs became agitated and started barking, and the owners immediately came to their dogs’ side and petted them and talked to them soothingly. We both enjoyed a drink and a dessert, while we took photos of the cats. Some of them were not quite comfortable with the spotlight, but some were too cute not to bother; one looked like a Scottish fold who resembled Grumpy Cat, so obviously, we had to love on him. It was a pretty good time, and we spent around 440 NT (~12-13 USD) in total for both of us.

Last night, I hit up the most recent café. Toast Chat is located just west of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. It seemed like a bit of a wash at first; it was the most crowded of the cat cafés I’d been to, and more of a restaurant with some pretty exorbitant prices. The low spending limit was 200 NT, so I sat down and decided that with a price tag this high, I might as well have dinner. So I got myself a quesadilla with fries, and had to end up sitting near a corner which seemed kind of out of the way, and gave me no good way to look at cats. I sulked for a bit, but just read my book and ate my dinner. After a while, I decided to poke around and see what I could find. It turns out there was plenty to see. There was a tiger orange cat curled up on a shelf, two tortoiseshell cats hanging out, even a black and white tuxedo cat curled up and sleeping near a decorative yellow teapot. There was a tiny thing, a tortoiseshell kitten who was really probably no more than a few months old. I got some great pictures, and enjoyed petting the cats, who were the most docile and open to being cuddled of all the cats I’d met, so it ended up being all right! I paid 275 NT for my dinner, and walked to the nearby MRT station to head home.

The priciness of cat cafés has more or less started to sap my budget, so next week may be a bit less active. My time in Taipei is half over, and I’ve had an interesting time so far at the internship. I still have to see a few more friends and plan for this weekend, which is the Dragon Boat Festival. The actual holiday is called the Duanwu Festival (端午节). The Wiki article does a much better job of explaining the origins of the festival. All I know is that traditionally, you eat sticky balls of rice wrapped in lotus leaves, and watch dragon boats race on the river. It’s a very important holiday in Asia, and I even have the day off on Saturday. I may end up watching the dragon boats with friends! Then on Sunday night, it’s back to Taichung for me, which I’m really sincerely looking forward to.

Next time, I’ll talk about what I’ve been up to Taichung work-wise and more about the internship. Maybe even some about our day today!

Connie

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