Crazy Cats: THE Place
It's what New York was missing . Inexplicably, the city in which there are even specialty placemat stores did not yet have a cat cafe. Well, there was one, a pop-up earlier this year that was a real hit with hours of queuing for coffee while petting a cat. The strange thing is that it has taken so long to open a permanent one . But Meow Parlor (Salón Miau, in its translation) is here, a cat café in the Lower East Side to the delight of New Yorkers and visitors.
The food truck cat
The cafe was Christina Ha's idea. , co-founder and pastry chef at Macaron Parlour, and one of her longest-serving employees, Emilie Legrand who travels the world visiting cat cafes, a concept that was born in Asia in the 1990s. Their combined experiences have resulted in this pastry coffee shop (with feline-shaped macarons and cookies, of course) in which customers are as important as cats. Or, even more, the latter.
Coffee + Cats = High Cuckoo
“We envisioned a place where people could benefit from this [quiet] atmosphere while working or chatting with friends, and where cats are free to nap on someone's lap or to observe the clients from the high shelf”, said Legrand. “But I have also learned that in order to have the best experience in a cat café it is important to keep in mind that cats are the real bosses … and that is what makes it special, because each visit is different”
The cat: the king
The cafe with high and low tables is dominated by a large shelf with holes and strange shapes for the cats' amusement, when they don't want to be among the customers or waiting for you at the reception. For now, there are eight cats, but the site can accommodate a maximum of 12 and they are all from the KittyKind rescue association. In fact, if you get attached to a kitten while you finish your coffee you can adopt it and that is the great objective of its founders: that the largest number of cats be adopted.
Really?
The cafe opened on the 15th and, due to the expected high demand and to avoid long queues, **for now they only accept reservations that can be made through the web**. The first day they opened the system, they had more than a thousand reservations.
Taylor Swift, always
Wi-Fi is free, cakes and coffee are prepared for you in a separate room, Meow Parlor Patisserie, and then they're brought to you, while you're already sitting down petting Marty, Liza or Julian – all cats have names, of course. What they do charge is that time you spend with the kittens: $4 a half hour; or 30 for a maximum of five hours. There are also special days for children with cheaper prices.
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