With such a cosmopolitan city like Bangkok, trends come and go, with some surviving for many years, while others catching the interest of the local people for only a few months at a time. Now that most well-to-do Thais have visited Korea several times and have posted selfies with Korean food on their Facebook wall, it is time to move slightly further across the globe. For the past year, the craze in Thailand has been with Japan and all things Japanese. If you really want to be in the know, then regular visits to Japan are necessarily to be followed by uploading as many pictures of yourself as possible onto your social media platforms.
One of the most liked and shared Japan-related pictures on Facebook these days are those inside cat cafés where, for a fee and a rather expensive drink, you can play with the café owner’s cats and later on, while arriving back home, show off to your friends what a legitimate socialite you really are or, at least, show yourself to be! With the Japanese government now relaxing the visa requirements for several Southeast Asian countries (including Thailand) and their push to promote tourism after the 2011 tsunami and the following nuclear disaster, tourists are finding that Japan can be very affordable and thus many Thais and expats living in Thailand have recently increased their travel on holiday to Japan.
Although the concept of cat cafés didn’t really start in Japan, but rather in Taiwan, where the world’s first cat café was opened in Taipei in 1998, it could be argued that it was the Japanese endless love for cats and cute things that made this trend go global. Japan’s first cat café opened in Osaka in 2004 and now there are similar establishments all across the world, from Austria to the UK, from Korea to France. And of course, Bangkok has its own reputable cat cafés!
Waranya “Pang” Ruangkriengsin, the Bangkok cat expert
While there are almost forty cat cafés in Tokyo alone, the Thai capital sports just only five but, for cat lovers, these are more than enough and their location is well-known to the cat aficionados. I recently went on a tour of these Bangkok cat cafés and was lucky enough to have had as a guide Miss Waranya Ruangkriengsin, who is a young Thai art director and cat lover and has been regularly going to these cat cafés for almost over a year now.
“I can’t get enough of them,” she confessed while stroking a furry cat at our first stop. “I love being next to and playing with the cats, especially kittens who are still playful. I also love the big fat cats who just slouch on the armchairs and take the customers’ seat. Whenever I feel the need to relax after a hard day’s work, I call my friends and we meet up at one of the cat cafés to have an iced drink, sit for a chat and, of course, play with the cats and post our pictures on Facebook and Instagram.”
And that’s exactly what we both did on a quiet weekend afternoon. What really surprised me most was the vast variety of cat breeds that the cat cafés in Bangkok actually housed. Luckily I had an expert with me to tell me which feline was a Main Coon (or the American Longhair), or a Scottish Fold (with its distinctive folded ears), or a Persian cat (one of the most popular breeds in the USA), or a Napoleon cat (with its dense coat and short legs), or an American Shorthair (which can come in eighty different colours and patterns), or a blue-eyed Ragdoll – to name just a few!
As a general rule in Thailand, unlike Japan, there’s no cover fee for going into the cat cafés and playing with the cats, but drinks and food can be quite expensive, although of some very good quality. Some places are strict when it comes to handling the cats and the relevant hygiene, but if you’re a cat lover, then just being around the cats while you’re having an ice-cold drink on a rather hot day will give you all the comfort that you need. House rules are posted at the entrance of each cat café and some even fine customers for breaking them (for example, lifting and placing a cat onto your lap can set you back 1,000 baht and quite possibly, for some people, that may well ruin their day!).
So, without further ado, here’s the list of the five cat cafés you can find in Bangkok:
1. Purr Cat Café Club is located on Sukhumvit Rd. 53, about 5-10 minutes walk from BTS Thong Lor. They’re open on Monday and Tuesday from 11am to 8pm, while at the weekend it stays open until 9pm. Their Facebook fan page has a staggering 30,000 fans and it is considered by far the best and most hi-so cat café that Bangkok has to offer.
2. Cataholic Café, based on an addicted cat-aholic, is a bit more difficult to find as it is tucked away on the second floor of the Ozono Plaza but it can be reached most easily via Petchaburi Rd. on Soi 38/1 or, alternatively, from Sukhumvit Rd. 39. It’s open from Tuesday to Friday from 12-noon to 9pm while at the weekend it opens a bit earlier at 11:30am. Cataholic also has a large following on Facebook with over 23,000 fans but the place is smaller than Purr Cat Café. One could argue that the decorations are not that fancy, and customers sit on the floor at Japanese-styled tables.
3. Chico Cat Café is located in a beautiful house with a garden and it’s exquisitely decorated by its Japanese owner, who also allows customers to bring their own cats to play with the house cats. The café is located on Sukhumvit Rd. 53 and is open from Wednesday to Monday and Tuesday from 9:30am to 6pm. Because most of the updates on their Facebook fan page are only in Japanese text, this means that they have a weaker following but, nevertheless, the food and desserts they serve are most certainly top of the range.
4. Kitty Cat Café can be a relaxation place for those who don’t live downtown, who don’t want to face the Bangkok city traffic, and want to stay out late. This café is located within Town in Town (Tree Square Avenue) on Intharaphorn Rd. in Wang Thong Lang, and is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 10pm. You can easily find them on Facebook for pictures and videos of the cats they have and the food they serve.
5. Charming Cats Café is perhaps, for some cat lovers, a bit out of the way when being located on Ladprao Rd. 71 (Soi 46) and is open only on Saturday and Sunday from 1pm to 9pm. However, during the weekdays it also operates as a pet-shop which offers supplies and accessories for both domestic cats and dogs.
A shorter version of this article was initially published in Mango Metro (February 2014, Vol.8, No.3)
Enjoy our Bangkok Cat Cafés gallery:
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