We Can’t Stop Thinking About Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen Giggling About a Cat Bar
After watching the now-viral New Year’s Eve clip, you may too be wondering: What in the world is a cat bar or café, anyway?
Noam Galai
Editor's Note: Food Network and CNN are sister networks under parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.
As people in time zones around the world were already wishing each other a happy new year, things in New York City’s Times Square seemed to get pretty giddy before the clock officially struck midnight. Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen rang in 2024 as they have for the past seven years by co-hosting CNN’s coverage of the festivities from the heart of NYC while checking in on celebrations happening around the globe. One of those check-ins, featuring musician John Mayer from his current tour in Tokyo, has gone viral for Cooper’s inability to keep it together while Grammy winner Mayer reported live from a bar full of cats.
Cooper is seen (and heard) giggling throughout the clip while Mayer keeps his delivery deadpan as he explains the concept and general scene at Bar Cats in the Box which plays host to both human drinkers and 20 cuddly cats in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. The full segment includes Mayer feeding his nearby feline friends some treat paste from his fingertips and ends with Cohen and Cooper meowing.
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What Are Cat Cafés?
It’s unclear whether Anderson Cooper’s giggles were directed at the specific surroundings Mayer found himself in or the concept of cat cafes in general, but for the unfamiliar, cat cafés are businesses where customers can pay to pet and play with cats. Depending on the establishment (and local health codes), sometimes the “café” label includes food for people and in some cases it may refer to food and treats for the cats themselves which human patrons can purchase for the cats to enjoy. However, in many cases, “café” is a misnomer as the business is moreso a food-free place to hang out with cats.
According to Guinness World Records, the oldest continually operating cat café opened in Taipei, Taiwan in 1998. The concept rose to popularity in Japan throughout the early 2000s, which has been attributed to the fact that many apartment buildings in the country do not allow pets, so cat cafés became a way for would-be cat owners to enjoy the company of cats without violating their tenant agreements.
Cat cafés have since popped up around the world. The first permanent U.S. cat cafe, Cat Town, opened in Oakland, CA in October 2014, followed by Meow Parlour in Manhattan a couple months later, with dozens more popping up across the country in the years since.
Concerns have been raised about the care, wellbeing and possible exploitation of the cats living at or owned by such establishments. Many cafés have established rules that bar people from picking up or otherwise bothering the cats, instead allowing the animals to approach and interact with customers on their own. In Japan, the government has even set curfews for how late the cats to be on display. In the U.S. and abroad, many cat cafés also operate as de facto shelters, taking in stray cats with the intention of adopting them out to permanent homes.
Are Cat Cafés Clean?
While having a bunch of loose cats roaming around a restaurant might seem like a sanitation nightmare, typically most cat cafés have two distinct sections: The café or kitchen portion where food is ordered and prepared, and a separate or sealed off cat section where customers of the café are free to take and enjoy their food after it’s been served.
Just how intermixed the cat and cafe portions are allowed to be varies by the country or city’s local health code and licensing laws. In New York City, for example, the health department requires that not only do the staff of the food side of the establishment not be able to intermingle with the pet-themed areas of the business (and vice versa), the food-service portion and the animal-focused portion must have two separate addresses and only be accessible by first exiting one completely outside before entering the other. Hence the locations of the aforementioned Meow Parlour and its partner bakery Macaron Parlour at 46 and 44 Hester Street, respectively.
That said, the Tokyo bar featured in the CNN segment appears to have cats on the actual bar. So if you’re not looking to have cats slinking around your hard seltzer or leaping over beer while you sip it, maybe opt to grab a drink elsewhere.
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