{"id":239234,"date":"2017-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/kitties-and-coffee\/"},"modified":"2017-06-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T07:00:00","slug":"kitties-and-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/kitties-and-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"Kitties and coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cat Caf\u00e9 combines caffeine with adoption potential<\/strong><\/p>\n

por Juan Gregorio<\/p>\n

The exterior looks like any other Downtown coffee shop except for the name on the sign: Cat Caf\u00e9. Inside, furry felines wander about, mingling with guests who sip coffee or tea and calmly pet the small, four-legged creatures.<\/p>\n

\"Kitties
Sara Atkinson and Emmanuel Ramirez enjoy an afternoon at Cat Cafe. (Foto por Juan Gregorio)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Customers can order their drinks at a narrow counter in a room to the side of the entrance. Then, after walking through a series of doors that keep the cats inside, they can play with kitties in a large room filled with soft cushions, small cat beds, a miniature Eiffel Tower and shelves on the walls for the cats to climb. The atmosphere is very calming, and the cats are the stars of the show.<\/p>\n

\"Kitties
Cat Caf\u00e9 owner Tony Wang (Courtesy Tony Wang)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey do entertaining things,\u201d said Tony Wang, owner and general manager of the Cat Caf\u00e9. \u201cSome of them will climb up into that Eiffel Tower and they\u2019ll spend all day hanging out there. Whenever they do that, people are always amazed.\u201d<\/p>\n

A textured wall stands at the rear of the room dividing the playroom from an office and a back room storing cat food, supplies, litter boxes and a few more wall platforms for the cats to climb.<\/p>\n

The wall, which resembles a flat mountainside, does not go all the way to the ceiling but it\u2019s several feet high. Amazingly, some of the cats have been seen jumping over the wall, Wang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are the ones who will open the bathroom door and just hang out in the bathroom until we see them,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re pretty interesting creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wang said he opened Cat Cafe in January 2015 after reading about a similar business in Paris that had a two- to three-month waiting list to get a reservation. Customers at that cafe could get a sit-down meal, but food regulations are different in the U.S. Department of Public Health regulations require that the food-serving area be located in a separate room. Once guests are served their beverages and snacks, they can enter the cat play area.<\/p>\n

\"Kitties
A customer plays with a feisty feline (Foto por Juan Gregorio)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first cat cafe was started in Taiwan in 1988, Wang said. The concept spread to Japan and throughout Asia, then to Europe.<\/p>\n

At San Diego\u2019s Cat Cafe, located at 472 Third Ave., customers also have the opportunity to adopt one of the cats if they become attached to it. Cat Caf\u00e9 partners with The Rescue House, a local nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that specializes in rescuing cats, fostering them and helping them get adopted. Cats from the organization are brought to Cat Cafe, where they live until they are adopted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey look at us as kind of like a public foster home,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n

The Cat Caf\u00e9 usually has about 10 cats wondering around that come from The Rescue House each week. When a cat is adopted, The Rescue House brings another to the cafe. Wang owns three cats, one of which he adopted through his own cafe\u2019s program.<\/p>\n

\"Kitties
A kitty cat gets some quiet time (Foto por Juan Gregorio)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had an interest in animal welfare,\u201d said Wang, who previously had a career in sales and marketing. \u201cI figured this would provide me with an opportunity to hopefully do well while doing some good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wang said the Cat Caf\u00e9 has seen 221 cats adopted as of February. When interviewed, he said two cats on the premises were spoken for at that time and two cats were adopted the week before.<\/p>\n

He said his Cat Caf\u00e9 is the only one of its kind in San Diego, but he knows of one in Los Angeles. Most of his customers come from Downtown, North County and East County.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt swings more toward tourists and Downtown residents during the week and then on the weekends, that\u2019s when we\u2019ll get people coming in from Carlsbad or El Cajon,\u201d Wang said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people drive down from the Los Angeles area. They tell us they are making a little day trip out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cat Caf\u00e9 is open from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. daily. For more information, visit catcafesd.com<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cat Caf\u00e9 combines caffeine with adoption potential By John Gregory The exterior looks like any other Downtown coffee shop except for the name on the sign: Cat Caf\u00e9. Inside, furry felines wander about, mingling with guests who sip coffee or tea and calmly pet the small, four-legged creatures.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":239235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Kitties and coffee","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}