The Emergence Of The Urban Cat

With all the cat lovers out there it is no surprise that there is a market for custom-built furniture to suit your feline friends’ every need. Recognising this, German Company Goldtatze makes hand crafted designer furniture that can be mounted to the walls and ceilings to create the puurfect playground for your pet.

Founded by Stefan Hofmann, and inspired by his cat Mowgli, Goldtatze (which translates as Gold Paw) creates items of furniture including wall mounted perches and beds, climbing trees and scratching posts and suspended ceiling walkways. The furniture is designed to give cats their own space within the home, providing them with and area to play, sleep and relax; a kitty haven if ever we’ve seen one. For cat enthusiasts who aren’t satisfied with an in-home cat playground, public spaces for the sole purpose of feline company and a cup of kit-tea is trending meow. What a purrfect combination!

Goldtatze

Cat cafés have made their way from Japan to London and elsewhere throughout Asia and Europe since the mid 2000s. However, attempts to bring such establishments to the United States have been cat-astrophic due to restrictive health code regulations disallowing animals on restaurant premises. Two initiatives in Boston and San Francisco have given cat enthusiasts in the United States hope for cat-integrated cafés.

Goldtatze

Miaow Boston and KitTea of San Francisco are currently in the early stages of development, modeled after cat cafés like Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium in London, or Tom’s Cat Café in Seoul which feature all the amenities of a normal café but with a number of cats which patrons are free to interact with at will. Despite several barriers to establishing a cat café in the US, the innovators of KitTea are approaching the regulations carefully, including plans for veterinary services for the resident cats as well as behavioral introductory periods for cats into the café environment. Although the success of feline-integrated recreational spaces in the US has yet to be seen, cat lovers on both coasts are hopeful about the pawsibilities