After much anticipation, My Kitty Café opened the morning of Oct. 17. Hundreds of people filled Guelph’s first cat café throughout the day for its grand opening to get their share of caffeine and cat cuddles.
“It was fun,” said Min Kim, the café’s owner. “We didn’t have an overwhelming number of people—we had just the right number. We had maximum capacity, and there were constant [people] coming in and out. Six hundred people, maybe. On Facebook, [the event] hit 2,000 people.”
Cat cafés have been popular in Asia for a long time, however, they are a fairly new trend in Canada, with the first one in Toronto just opening up at the end of last month.
Walking into My Kitty Café feels like entering a living room, with cozy couches scattered everywhere as well as numerous structures for the cats to play on. Guests can order salads, sandwiches, muffins, cookies, and homemade Korean dishes while relaxing with the animals.
“We don’t actually have many tables, because we wanted people to sit on the floor with [the cats],” said Kim. “Because when you [usually] go to a café, you have high chairs and high tables. But how are you going to play with the kittens? You can’t. So I wanted to create the best area for cats, which is the living room.”
If guests take a liking to a particular cat, they have the option of taking him or her home. This is because all of the cats in the café are up for adoption through the Guelph Humane Society.
“A lot of times when you want to adopt an animal, you go to their shelters, or you go to pet stores [and] whatnot,” said Kim. “You go and play with them for two seconds, and you think, ‘I want that kitten or that dog’, and then you bring them home and you realize that it’s not going to work. So here…you actually get to know them before you say ‘let’s do it’ or ‘let’s not.’”
So far, the concept has been a tremendous success, with all 13 kittens at the café being adopted out on opening day. Kim says that he now wants to focus on adopting out adult cats rather than kittens, because they’re more difficult to find homes for.
The café is based on the kindness of the Guelph community. According to Kim, no contract work was needed to build the café. “There are so many good people helping out with this, donation-wise, and especially their time,” he said. “There were people who came here to clean the floor [and] paint. This wall had to be built, and someone, out of literally nowhere, built it for me. The paw prints [on the ceiling], for example, we didn’t have a high enough ladder to go up and do that. So someone went to Home Depot, rented the ladder, brought it here with their car, and then brought it back.”
During our interview, Kim gestured to a giant cat play structure in the middle of the café. “This is the best cat tree in the world,” he said. “This person came in, and said, ‘Min…I think I can build this tower…I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Would you please let me build this?’ He really wanted to do it. I was like, ‘But it’s so much work, it’ll take a lot of time and money.’ But the moment I said okay, he brought in piles of carpet and two-by-fours, and it turns out he’s been collecting them for a while. He hasn’t even charged me a penny yet. He just said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”
The seven-foot cat tower also serves as a safe haven for the cats to retreat to in case they become overwhelmed by guests. Kim explained that this was a major consideration when incorporating some of the cat-only furniture into his café.
Indeed, kindness and appreciation for both cats and people seem to be some of the main values of the café.
“Be good to people,” said Kim. “It’s not about the money or anything else. Just be good to people, and they’ll be good to you.”