Cat Cafes

Aussies picking up a fad:

Australia's first cat cafe will open in Melbourne this July. The premises will comprise a cafe and an area that houses a number of cats that people pay to visit and interact with. The idea came from husband and wife team, Anita and Myles Loughran, after they visited a cat cafe in Tokyo on their honeymoon. After returning to Australia and becoming dissatisfied with their jobs, they decided to see if starting their own cat cafe was feasible.

...The cafe area is on the ground floor while the cats are located on the first floor. "There are four rooms for people to interact with the cats and a fifth room which is just for the cats and where they stay overnight," Loughran says.

...Loughran says there is a maximum of 15 cats allowed, although the final number they will have is yet to be determined.

...Visitors who want to interact with the cats pay $10 for the first hour and then $5 for every half an hour. There are rules around interacting, such as not feeding them or waking them if they're asleep, and there's no limit to the amount of time they can spend with them.

While this is the first cat cafe of its type in Australia, there are other cafes that allow people to bring their pets with them. Cafe Bones in Sydney's Leichhardt describes itself as "the world's first truly dog-friendly cafe" and serves pupacinos for dogs, along with coffees for their owners.