You knew this was gonna happen, right?

I have died and gone to Heaven

This guy with the folded ears and wild face reminded me of my Max

You can pretty much guess this kitty’s personality.

See? Just like Max.

This one was like Pandora — here on her own terms. And not exactly pleased about it either.

One of each, please.

Please ignore the stage mom in the reflection

The Sphinx rushed over to the entryway when Sly got up to leave. She didn’t want her friends to leave

Until next time, Kitty. 

Our first real weekend exploring our new home and of course we found a cat cafe. The sun always rises in the East and sets in the West, 2+2=4,  the sky is blue, and we will find a cat cafe. It’s written in the stars.

I spotted a sign with a photo of a cat on it with what seemed like instructions to climb to the steps to the right of us. We climbed to the fourth floor — following the paw print stickers on the stairs — of a small building lining one of the busier streets in downtown Daegu. Once at the cafe we took off our shoes, slipped into some provided rubber sandals, sanitized our hands, ordered a very expensive drink, and tried to keep my head from exploding.

There were kitties everywhere! Many of the older, chubbier kitties were asleep while the rest of them — mostly the kittens, piled around the center of the cafe where a couple of people were feeding the kittens treats and taking lots and lots of photos. I really wanted to pick up a kitten but there was no way they were leaving the tuna and no way the people feeding the tuna were going to stop any time soon (and no way they were making room for me on the floor anyway). One guy in particular was literally covered with about 6-7 cats — some asleep, some still looking for food, others curled up, fat and happy, beside him.

We gave up on the kittens and moved on to the older cats: a devious white sphynx, a sassy persian, a chubby orange tabby that I wanted to squeeze to pieces, a wild-looking cat with folded ears that reminded us so much of Max, and a bunch of other sleepy heads, all of them cute and as cuddly as can be. We sorta felt like we were cheating on our own kitties though. I mean, couldn’t we have just bought better, cheaper, coffee and taken it to where our kitties were staying and spent time with them? I suppose that’s besides the point.

In the past year cat cafe’s have become super popular in the US but they have been popular in Asia for quite some time. In the US the cats are usually available for adoption. Here — or at least at this cafe — I was not so sure. It was not evidently clear though on one wall all the kitties’ photos were pasted in a colorful, collage-like fashion, with what I’m assuming were their names and personality traits. Did that mean they were available for adoption? Or was that just a get to know our kitties sort of thing? Do they have a set amount of kitties that they keep forever? And where do they get the kitties? Breeders? Shelters? I’ll have to do more research…or learn to read Korean.

Obviously we loved this place, as would any lover of animals or kitties. Why couldn’t these have been around in college when we weren’t allowed to have kitties? I would have been there every night, “studying.” Dog lovers and farm animal lovers don’t despair: you can also find dog and…farm cafes in Korea. Definitely on our places to visit list.

DETAILS

Go – yeong – E Cat Café  (고양이) // There seem to a couple of cat cafes in the downtown Daegu area — of the two I’m aware of, one is a Dog AND Cat cafe (that I think is called something like DOG CAT — I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough) and then there’s this one — which was cats only. We found it by accident — as we were walking back to the subway I noticed a sign outside an open stairwell that had a huge cat photo. When I looked to the right I noticed the stairs had arrows, paw stickers, and “Cat Cafe” text. We put 2+2 together and followed the signs up to the cafe. In many cat cafes they charge an admission fee — usually less than $10 — that also includes a drink. At this cafe we weren’t charged an admission fee per se, but the drinks they served were expensive — like $7 for a small cup of tea. So pretty much the same thing. There were other drinks available — coffee, sweet milkshake-y drinks, etc. The good thing is that there’s no time limit, and if I remember correctly, there’s free wifi (like every single place in Korea) — so you can pretty much spend all day/night here until closing. It also seemed like there were treats available for purchase (we think) which kind of concerned me. Hopefully these kitties aren’t getting too many treats at once — I can’t imagine that would be good for them.  DIRECTIONS: Better directions along with better photos of the signage and building can be found here, an awesome resource for those that live in Daegu. According to their blog, “To get to the cafe, walk to the stage in downtown Daegu. If you are facing the stage you will need to take the road that slightly forks to the right. You will see a massive billboard advertising the café on the roof above the Body Shop. It’s the first building entrance with the photos of cats on the door. Walk to the top floor.”