Who Thought Cat Cafes Were a Good Idea? | Hacker News Reader

Who Thought Cat Cafes Were a Good Idea?

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11 pointslxm33 comments

Cats are amazing as long as you know what to expect and how to be around them. People expecting smaller versions of dogs are in for some disappointment.

> Cats are amazing as long as you know what to expect and how to be around them

It's amazing how many people don't know that rule #1 for a cat is: let the cat be a cat, if she wants to interact with you she will come to you and ask.

Even more amazing is many people don't know that this is also valid for dogs - no, you should not complain that a dog in a subway nearly bit your hand off, when you simply go to the dog and pet it without asking the owner if the dog actually likes being touched by random people and don't first hold your hand in front of the dog's nose so he can sniff it before touching the back of his head from behind. That often enough the dog pays with his life for your inability to respect boundaries is horrible.

Then again, people generally don't respect the personal boundaries of anyone they deem "incapable" of having boundaries, including kids ("give stinky aunt a kiss"), women or old people... so it doesn't surprise me...

I usually try to make a point of lowering myself to an animal's approximate height because that feels less threatening, although I don't know quite how much of an impact that has. It seems obvious that the more respect you show an animal in this situation, the better.

Making yourself smaller is generally less threatening, but making eye contact or getting in their faces can be more threatening. So it depends.

> It seems obvious that the more respect you show an animal in this situation, the better.

It depends. Some animals behave better when it's clear to them that a) they're not the alpha and b) the alpha has everything under control.

> Making yourself smaller is generally less threatening, but making eye contact or getting in their faces can be more threatening.

The core point is: move slowly. Hectic movements will induce stress in any animal. Give it time to react to your presence and try to look at the body language (especially if it tries to back away from you or growls/hisses at you)... how often people fail to respect a hiss, it's unbelievable.

what you should do, to dogs definitely,(it helps with other animals too) is to lower a hand toward them, present the back of your hand and allow them to sniff it, only then should you attempt to stroke the dog (if it snarled at the offered hand dont stroke it), and when you do stroke it, dont go straight for the top of the head.

Crouching down to its height could expose you to worse injury as you are now putting your face and throat much closer to the animal.

These are the instructions I give my children, who love animals and are used to dogs and want to pet every dog they see.

What's amazing about them, then?

The attraction of cats is that you have a very slightly domesticated wild animal. There is really something magical about interacting with an animal that has a bit more agency than dogs who have been bred for millenia to be servants to humanity.

Exactly, and despite not being the most mentally capable cats exhibit very intelligent tendencies. They can have endless curiosity and playfulness, but also somehow still very lazy.

We had to cat sit a few times over the last six months, and Cat World isn't an easy place to understand.

Cats don't appear to have a good serial memory, so they can remember places and times up to a point, but not quite well enough to integrate them into a conceptual whole.

One cat was cute and sweet tempered, but also timid and really rather slow. We eventually worked out that she couldn't make the connection between the corridor that led to the kitchen in daylight, and the same corridor after dark.

She acted as if they were two completely different and unrelated spaces. So she had to timidly re-explore both every day, which caused non-trivial confusion because some of the things in the corridor already had her scent on them.

Every cat is different. Some can be downright neurotic, just like us. They also get senile in old age. I had the pleasure of growing into adulthood alongside a cat. He died 2 months shy of 20. He taught me a lot.

I've always thought that with dogs being domesticated is like a job. Sometimes it's a good job and you get to hang out with good people doing fun stuff. Other times it's a crap job and the boss will either forgot to pay you or beat you with a stick.

With cats on the other hand domestication is like a room you rent out at a house when you're college. The people there might be cool - the rent is so low it might as well be free and most of the time they don't care if you steal their food. In the back of the cat's head (and I think this is true for the most pampered domesticated cat in the world) is the knowledge that it's a place to crash and if things get too weird they can always bail out.

From that point of view I tend to give cats a lot more leeway. I mean a cat doesn't really have to pop over onto my lap and let me scratch it's head. It's the one putting itself out there in a reasonably genuine way.

Dogs though I'm always a bit suspicious of because popping over to have their had scratched? That's their job. Maybe they like me but it's like when you go to McDonald's and the person behind the counter smiles and asks you if you want fries with that as if you're the best person in the world.

Not sure about amazing (though the landing trick is pretty cool) but instructive.

For example, I had been told as a child that humans were the only animals that killed for sport. Yeah right. You don't have to spend decades with chimps to know that's a load of hogwash. And why kill straightaway when you can do a little light torturing first?

Evil little buggers. It occurred to me once that James Bond may have got it horribly wrong. Blofeld was being stroked by his pet not the other way around.

I'm not sure what it says about humans that we keep these vicious and sadistic predatory killers around for petting and general entertainment.

And I say that as someone who likes cats.

They are sometimes cuddly. I think that's what it is.

The whole fluffy, purr machine gig is a ploy to lead you into a false sense of security. Evil and cunning.

Well we keep humans around too and they are at least as wicked :)

I don't know. I just love cats. With a little patience and familiarity, they return that affection in their own way.

I like how smart, cool and autonomous a cat is. It's an adventure to teach a dog where to poop, but put the kitten in the sandbox, maybe dip your hand in it for a second, and they just learn it straight away. I had three kittens about a year and a half ago, their mom was killed by a car while they were less than a month old. We fed them, changed the sand, played with them a couple times a day and cuddled them, and in a bunch of months they were ready to go their way. I love dogs too, but they are way more harder to take care of, and they'll just poop anywhere. They are way more playful than cats, though some cats can be very playful too.

I'd rather pet somebody elses dog and have a cat for myself.

I helped to found kitTea (kitteasf.com) here in SF. So... obvs I love the idea. If anyone has any questions about cat cafes etc... AMA

One thing I will say from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is that is was soon OBVIOUS that people loved the the idea and there was (some) demand.

I generally doubt that products market themselves & am skeptical of organic growth stories. But this was a case that showed me there can be big positive demand signals.

"Who Thought Cat Cafes Were a Good Idea?" me ;) I remember I went nuts when I found out there's this tea time place with loads of cats in London, it's amazing.

Anyway if animals are used in therapy why that wouldn't work in other environment.

Yes, I'll have a medium toxoplasmosis latte, please?

if they do not go outside they would be clean from toxo

ok, thanks for the assurances; I'll forward all insurance claims to you

Around Istanbul cats everywhere are a common sight. There's the Kedi documentary that was recently showing internationally that talks about them at lenght. I can't read the article because of the paywall (and no I won't subscribe for reading one single article, why these sites do not have the option to buy access to one article only?---even though I'm not really that interested in this particular one), but can kind of guess what it is about. Cats in public spaces adapt very nicely and usually do not make any trouble. They also attract many people, giving the cafe an image of a nice, cozy place. If I was running a cafe, I'd definitely have a couple of them.

Can’t read the article because paywall, but the cat cafe I went to in Tokyo was amazingly relaxing.

Archive.is has a copy: https://archive.fo/0dxqQ

Try the "web" link at the top of this page, then the first search result which should be labelled "Top stories".

Paywall, using the google search also reports a paywall. Could we drop this kind of sites? There's alternatives.

Yeah it's frustrating how often at least one story on the front page is behind a paywall and I have to hope someone posts an alternative in the comments. Can we ban these or at least add a tag so that I know not to waste my time clicking on them?

https://outline.com/ is a favorite of mine to get around paywalls as well. There is also a chrome extension.

You aren’t missing much, it’s a totally useless fluff piece that is mostly a list of things the writer could imagine going wrong with cat cafes, topped off with some cat themed puns.

> fluff

Thank you for your summary and likely inadvertent cat themed pun. ;-)

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