The Taipei cat cafe that’s been winning over city’s dog lovers for 20 years, and its feline stars
- In a place where the only cats most people see are the stray ones at markets, Genki Cat Café’s 26 felines have helped make the animal more widely accepted
- Regular customers like to sit and watch the cats come and go, with giant Maine Coon cats the leaders of the pack
As you eat your beef rice bowl at the small cafe, an outsize 16-year-old Maine Coon cat with long fur and a tail to match has every right to jump onto the table. Another cat, one adopted from Taipei’s streets, might brush your leg.
These human-feline encounters are hardly random. The Genki Cat Café, in business for 20 years, lets 26 cats do as they wish. Customers in the one-room cafe just off Taipei’s metro line know about its rule by cats, and the space easily fills up at weekends.
Taipei people, who typically prefer to keep dogs as pets, learn about cats literally in leaps and bounds as they play with the cafe’s permanent residents.
“I felt a change set in when I came in,” says Chen Pei-jung, an 18-year-old dog owner who visited the cat cafe for her first time in August. “The cats are so cute, and there’s even a cat that stands guard at the door. I used to think cats would get scared and attack people, but the ones here are very kind. You can pet them and they’re nice.”
Older Taiwanese believe cats “carry evil spirits” and will tell their own children to avoid them – if nothing else because they might scratch – said Linda Arrigo, an American-born academic researcher who owns nine cats in suburban Taipei. Generally, a Taipei dweller might see cats only living as strays in the eaves of wet markets or on rooftops.