“Hi there you cool cats and kittens”… wait hang on, I’m not talking about those types of cats.
The first cat café opened in Taiwan in 1998, in Japan in 2004, and Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium opened in Shoreditch, UK, in 2014. In January of this year I visited You&Meow Cat Café in Bristol. It opened in 2017 and offers customers the chance to have refreshment whilst surrounded by rescued cats, and since opening they have rehomed over 34 cats (You&Meow, 2019). I had a great time whilst there, but upon doing further research into how and why cat cafés came into being, I discovered that there is a large body of literature, both academic and journalistic, about the emotional politics behind them.
We’ve all heard the term ‘crazy-cat lady’ which brings to mind images of a woman living alone surrounded by cats for company. Whilst in my mind this sounds like an ideal way to get through week 5 blues (damn the no pets rule), there is some truth to the idea of cats reducing loneliness. Plourde (2014) argues that cats perform affective labour through bringing a sense of calm, relaxation and closeness to us humans. In Japan, and increasingly around the globe, cat cafés form part of a ‘healing industry’, in which the immaterial products of affection and closeness are marketed to the masses. Why? Well, cats have been shown to reduce stress levels and blood pressure, which is linked to lower cardiovascular risk (Qureshi et al., 2009) and a study on students showed that after viewing images of kittens and puppies, they were able to perform “tasks requiring focused attention more carefully” (Nittono et al., 2012). The café that I visited resonates with Plourde’s (2014) theory, stating that it has been designed as a place of “peace, calm & serenity” (You&Meow, 2020). It is interesting to note changes in our relationships with cats as temporary consumers rather than private owners.
However, there are concerns for the welfare of the cats. Cats Protection, the UK’s largest cat charity, stated, “we are concerned about the welfare implications of having a number of cats in a limited space with groups of people unknown to them coming and going throughout the day” (Cats Protection, 2019). Simultaneously, the number of stray cats in the UK is approximately 9 million, compared to 7.4 million that are kept as pets, leading to what the RSPCA is terming a “cat overpopulation crisis” (RSPCA 2019). This leads one to the question: where do you draw the line between providing for cats in need of a home and removing them from a shelter in pursuit of profit?
What this brief piece has aimed to do is not to convince you that cat cafés are either positive or negative, but to encourage you to think about the political issues that are behind inconspicuous parts of our lives. Here there is the issue of commodifying intimacy through ‘healing industries’, allowing us to question whether this is the new stage of capitalism. There are huge questions around animal rights, leading us to the massive field of animal geographies (shout out to Phil Howell). As geographers, we’re always told to critically engage with the things that are around us from what we see on the news to the norms that we act upon daily, and our little feline friends are no different!!
Written by Sophie John, third year Geographer at Corpus Christi College.
References:
Cats Protection (2019) https://www.cats.org.uk/derbydistrict/news/cat-cafe
Nittono, H. et al. (2012) The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus. PLoS ONE 7(9): e46362. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046362
Plourde, L. (2014) Cat Cafés, Affective Labor, and the Healing Boom in Japan. Japanese Studies, 34(2): 115-133
Qureshi, A.I. et al. (2009) Cat ownership and the Risk of Fatal Cardiovascular Diseases. Results from the Second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study Mortality Follow-up Study. Journal of Vascular and Interventional Neurology, 2(1): 132-135
RSPCA (2019) https://www.rspca.org.uk/-/2019_02_26_cat_crisis_figures_reveal_cats_as_most_rescued_animal
You&Meow (2019) https://www.youandmeow.co.uk/post/my-why-the-real-beginnings-of-you-meow
You&Meow (2020) https://www.youandmeow.co.uk/about-us
Image Credits: Sophie John
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF COMPASS MAGAZINE AS A WHOLE OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY.