I don’t know what it’s advertising, but it put a smile on my face!

A few months ago, I published a post about a new rage in Japan: Cat Cafés. Like an Internet Café, it’s a place to hang out, but with furry felines taking the place of computer stations.

Recently, I ran across a first-person account of a visit to one of these cafés by Sarah Marchildon. Here’s an excerpt:

I went to a cat cafe in Osaka yesterday. Although, describing it as a “cafe” is somewhat misleading. It’s more of a cat brothel than a cat cafe.

Six hundred yen (about $5) gets you all the cats you can stroke for an hour. A few hundred yen extra gets you a drink to quench your thirst after all of the heavy petting is over.

After you have removed your shoes, sterilized your hands and paid your money, it’s time to get down on your knees and play with the cat of your choice.

The cafe is called Neko no Jikan 猫の時間 (or “Cat Time” in English). The 20 cats that work here have free range of the place, sitting and sleeping wherever they like.

The cafe consists of two large rooms. There is the cafe area, which is exactly what it sounds like. There are couches and small tables where you can sip a cup of coffee while a cat sleeps on your lap or at your feet. It is a cozy space with soft lighting and classical music playing quietly in the background.

The other room, attached to the cafe, is best described as a cat playroom. No drinks are allowed in this room. You can play with the cats or just sit on one of the many couches and watch all of the four-legged loving go down.

The cafe was busy but not crowded. The vast majority of customers were women. There were a few men but they had all come on the arms of their girlfriends. The most enthusiastic customer was a middle-aged man with a 1950s rock-and-roll pompadour. He made a point of talking to all of the cats, clucking and cooing over their every move.

“Oh look at you! You sure like to sleep don’t you? Oh, yes you do. Yes you do. You cute little sleeper you.”

Of course, cats being cats, it was somewhat difficult to seduce them into spending time with you. They would sit in your lap for about a minute before squirming out of your embrace.

If you wanted a cat to play with you, you were better off buying some tuna from the cafe in order to lure them in. These ladies bought some tuna and they were instantly the most popular people in the room.

The woman with the pink cell phone on her lap could tell I was feeling a bit left out so she handed me a piece of her tuna. As soon as I started waving the tuna around, I had no shortage of cats wanting to sit on my lap. But once the tuna was gone, so were they.

Everyone was pouring out love to these cats but the cats weren’t giving much back. Cats do not love stupidly and blindly like dogs. Cats can be affectionate and playful but they are also independent and solitary (or stubborn and uncooperative, depending on your viewpoint). I was happy enough just to be near them.

I had a brilliant idea: shelters in the United States should build cat cafés and populate them with adoptable cats. If I worked, say, in downtown San Francisco, and could spend my lunch break petting cats, I would so totally do that. How about you?

Read the whole story here.

Well, check out this video of another Japanese train station cat, this one in Hiroshima. This one isn’t quite the high achiever that Tama is. Maybe she needs a stationmaster cap for motivation. Or perhaps she just has a case of the Mondays.

http://blogs.catster.com/the-cats-meow-a-cat-and-kitten-blog/cat-boosts-finances-of-kishi-japan-by-11-billion-yen/2008/10/06/ Roaming the Kishi train station in a dapper stationmaster’s cap, an 8-year-old calico cat named Tama performs the stationmaster’s duties on the Wakayama Electric Railway’s Kishigawa Line which runs between cities of Wakayama and Kinokawa.

Tourists flock by the thousands to see Yama, boosting the small city’s finances by 1.1 billion yen in 2007.

With 55,000 more people having used the Kishigawa Line than would normally be expected, Tama is being credited with a contribution to the local economy calculated to have reached as much as 1.1 billion yen (10.44 million dollars) in 2007 alone, according to a study announced last week.

Katsuhiro Miyamoto, a professor at Kansai University’s School of Accountancy, said picture books and other merchandise featuring the feline stationmaster also produced significant economic effects.

A television appearance and other publicity surrounding Tama — who receives cat food in lieu of a salary — was worth 280 million yen, according to Miyamoto.

The former stray rose to national stardom in January 2007 when the railway company formally appointed her* as “stationmaster”. The station was formerly unmanned and losing money, but Tama turned things around. Tama later got her own spacious 1.8-square-meter office in the station (formerly the ticket window), fully equipped with a ventilation fan and a toilet.

Tama’s popularity eventually required that they hire an assistant (Mr. Nishiyama) for her. Mr Nishiyama helps guide visitors to Yama.

Here’s Tama in Action:

When Tama puts her front legs together, the patterns on her fur form a heart shape. It is said that it is good luck for couples to visit Tama and be shown the heart.

* Some stories referred to Tama as male, some as female. So my guess is that “Tama” is the Japanese equivalent of “Pat.”