Cat Café.

On Saturday, I experienced my first “Cat Café.” These are all over Korea, but I have never had the opportunity to go to one and see it for myself. On Saturday morning, Amanda, Sarah, and I all met at 9:15am at the subway station, and headed to Seoul to do some shopping. (Friday was payday, so what better way to spend our money, right?!) We weren’t looking for anything in particular, just looking around for anything that we just couldn’t live without!

We hit up a few stores, and then met a new girl, Wendy. She’s basically a friend of a friend through Amanda. She’s only been in Korea for 2 weeks, so she hasn’t had the chance to make any friends or see any part of Korea. We met her, and she’s really great! She works for Hyundai, and is only here for 7 months on an internship. (Wendy is one of our few non-teacher friends, so we were pretty excited to meet her!) She’s Chinese-Canadian, and she’s around our age, mid-twenties. All four of us hit it off right away, so that’s good. We did some more shopping, and then grabbed some lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Japanese restaurant. After that, came the Cat Café.

There are cat cafés all over Korea. (There are also dog cafés for those dog-lovers out there!) When we got there, we took our shoes off and slipped into some soft sandals they give you. We went up to the counter (which had a cat on it!), and paid. It was 8,000 won (about $7), and we ordered a drink, any coffee or tea that we wanted. (This was included in the price we paid at the door.) We sat down at a table in the corner, and gave the café workers our purses. There were about 15 cats wandering around the café. There were toys everywhere, boards nailed into the walls for the cats to climb on, sleeping crates and scratching posts around the room, it was basically a cat’s heaven. And while we had our drinks, the cats wandered around. We could pick them up and play with them, or hold them or feed them. Sigh…it was so wonderful.

So, my first cat café experience was a success!! You definitely have to be a cat person to appreciate cat cafés, but it was wonderful! I definitely want to go to another one in the future.