When in Asia...

When I first moved to Singapore I made a nice long list of all the things I need to do, places I need to go and weird Asian experiences that I need to embrace.

            Over the past eight months or so I have been working my way through this list fairly steadily, but there was one thing on there that I had put on hold for a while. Initially I was waiting for Debbie to come to visit, then I thought I would wait until Karen was here when we ran out of time during Debbie’s trip, but with a free Saturday morning stretching ahead of me while Nick went out to a tech convention (from the sounds of it, it was a conference centre filled to the brim with wires and electronics – he was in his element!) I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go on my own.

So it was that my Saturday morning was spent in Neko no Niwa Cat Café. That’s right, a cat café. I had assumed that this would be a bit like a normal café with tables and chairs set up as usual, but with cats wandering around and jumping onto your lap when you had been settled for long enough. That sounded like something I could handle on my own, and so I set off on my Saturday adventure.

            My assumptions were not entirely accurate. It is a café in the sense that coffee is served to you while you’re there, but rather than usual café seating, there was simply a bench running around the perimeter of the room, all facing straight at a cat play / sleep / scratching tower where ten cats were entertaining themselves.

The rules of the house are that you are only allowed to approach the cats when they are awake, and even then you’re not allowed to pick the cats up or manhandle them too much. The sensible cats slept through most of the morning, but two or three were up and about, and so facing the brunt of all the visitors enthusiasm.

            I’m not sure if it was perhaps the first time some of these people had seen a cat in the flesh, but they were chasing them around the room like crazy, desperately trying to get them to sit with them and nuzzling them in an attempt to lure them onto their laps and of course, desperately scrabbling for the best possible selfie opportunity whenever a new cat opened their eyes for more than five seconds. After a quick look around and a couple of ear scratches I decided that I would drink my coffee from the safety of a seat in the corner and observe the crazy rather than involving myself too much.

            It was a very strange place to have a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, and one that I am not sure I will need to return to anytime soon. Still, it’s another slightly bizarre Asian game ticked off the list, and it was quite fun in its own special way, so I’m glad that I made the most of the free Saturday morning (and that I didn’t try to force Nick to come along with me – I would have been in trouble for that one!).