The cat cafe did not start in Brooklyn. The first, Cat Flower Garden, opened in Taipei, Taiwan in 1998 and became a tourist draw, but Japan turned the idea into an industry: Osaka’s Neko no Jikan opened in 2004, Tokyo followed a year later, and the country now has more than 300. The driver was real estate. Young, overworked corporate employees packed into small city apartments whose leases banned pets, so they rented feline company by the hour. Japan’s animal treatment and protection law set curfews for the cats, first 8 p.m. and later 10 p.m. after cafe owners lobbied, and customers may not wake a sleeping cat. One Tokyo cafe even added live goats to stand out.

North America rebuilt the model around adoption. Oakland’s Cat Town opened in 2014 as the first in the US, and within seven months its partner shelter’s euthanasia rate fell from 41 to 21 percent. Health codes demanded total separation between kitchen and cat lounge, and San Francisco’s KitTea spent months negotiating separate HVAC returns and airlock-style double doors. Europe added quirks and welfare debate: London’s Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium had a two-month waiting list, while the RSPCA and Cats Protection argued that crowds and scents stress solitary, territorial animals.

• Bristol’s Bag of Nails is a cat pub that has housed as many as 24 cats.
• Belgium’s Dreamcatchers employs a feline behavioral therapist to rehabilitate shelter cats before they meet the public.
• Austin’s Blue Cat Cafe closed in 2019 amid gentrification protests after its owner gave an interview to InfoWars.
• Sarawak, Malaysia banned animals from food premises in 2024, outlawing cat cafes there.
• Gaza’s Meow Cat Cafe opened in August 2023 before war forced it shut, while cafes in Lviv, Kharkiv, and Cherkasy stayed open.