The world’s first cat café opened in Taipei in 1998, and you can still visit it. Kitten Coffee Garden (小貓花園) is a small café in the Shilin district, across the road from Zhishan MRT station, where a dozen or so cats wander between the tables. In 2022 Guinness World Records named it the oldest cat café still in existence.
From that one café the idea spread to Japan, then to Russia and Europe, and in 2014 to North America and Australia. Today there are more than 4,000 cat cafés on our map in about 100 countries. This is how it happened.
Kitten Coffee Garden, Taipei (1998)
Kitten Coffee Garden, also known as Cafe Cats & Dogs, in Taipei
Tracy and her husband opened the café in 1998 with the five cats they had at home. The family did everything themselves: her sister painted the murals and her brother designed the sign, which still reads “CAFE’ & CATS 1998”. Business was slow at first, and some people who rang up thought they had reached a flower shop.
The turning point, Tracy told Vice, was a television report. Japanese travel writers followed, and Japanese visitors became regulars, some flying in several times a year. Tracy has always been modest about the title. She says they weren’t the first café in the world to have cats, just the first to be covered by the media on such a scale. Taiwanese newspapers reported on restaurants with resident cats earlier in the 1990s, according to a 2019 article by two Taiwanese geographers. What made Kitten Coffee Garden different is that the cats were the reason to come.
The café goes by several names. In English it is often called Cafe Cats & Dogs, because it has dogs too, and some older articles call it Cat Flower Garden, a literal translation of the Chinese. It is the same place.
How the Idea Reached Japan (2004)
Japan turned the cat café into a national pastime. The country’s first, Neko no Jikan (“Cat Time”), opened in Osaka’s Kita ward in 2004 and is still running near JR Tenma station. The Tokyo area’s first followed in 2005, and by the late 2000s cat cafés were opening across the capital, popular with people whose flats didn’t allow pets.
Japanese cafés also helped shape the rules. In June 2012 a new animal welfare regulation stopped shops from displaying dogs and cats after 8pm. Cat cafés lobbied for an exception, and the government let them keep adult cats out until 10pm, as long as the cats could retreat to a rest area whenever they liked. The exception was made permanent in 2016.
Japan now has 950-plus cat cafés on our map, more than any other country. Most are like the original Taiwanese café in one way: the cats live there. Our guide to cat cafés in Tokyo covers the city with the most.
Russia and Europe (2011–2014)
The first cat café in Russia, Respublika Koshek (“Republic of Cats”), opened in St Petersburg in 2011 as a city branch of the Cat Museum in nearby Vsevolozhsk. Its founder is a vet, and some of its cats came from the Hermitage, which has kept cats to guard against mice since the 18th century.
Western Europe followed quickly:
- Vienna, May 2012. Café Neko, near St Stephen’s Cathedral, was opened by Takako Ishimitsu after about three years of negotiating hygiene permits. It started with five cats from a shelter and is still open under new management.
- Munich, May 2013. Katzentempel opened as a vegan café with resident cats in Maxvorstadt. Katzentempel now has branches across Germany.
- Paris, September 2013. Le Café des Chats was funded by crowdfunding and became France’s first. It is still running, now on Rue Sedaine near Bastille.
- London, March 2014. Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, London’s first, opened in Bethnal Green with a two-month waiting list. A short-lived café in Totnes, Devon, had beaten it as Britain’s first in 2013. Lady Dinah’s nearly closed in 2025 and reopened in Greenwich in 2026; our London guide has the story.
North America and Australia (2014)
2014 was the year the cat café crossed the oceans, and it changed along the way.
- New York, April 2014. A four-day pop-up on the Bowery, sponsored by a pet food brand, showed off 16 adoptable cats from North Shore Animal League America.
- Melbourne, July 2014. Cat Café Melbourne opened as Australia’s first after its owners saw cat cafés in Japan on their honeymoon. It started with 12 cats from a shelter and, after a move in 2024, is still open. See our guide to cat cafés in Australia.
- Montreal, August 2014. Le Café des Chats opened as North America’s first permanent cat café, according to Guinness. Café Chat l’Heureux opened a few weeks later and is still running.
- Oakland, October 2014. Cat Town opened as the first permanent cat café in the United States. It grew out of a foster group that takes the cats least likely to be adopted from the city shelter.
- New York, December 2014. Meow Parlour opened on the Lower East Side with cats from a local rescue, KittyKind.
Guinness draws a useful line here. In “Old World” cafés, as in Taipei and Japan, the cats live at the café and the visit is the point. In “New World” cafés, the café works with a shelter, the cats are up for adoption, and every visit helps them find homes. Most cafés that opened in North America, the UK and Australia since 2014 follow the adoption model.
Cat Cafés Today
Nearly three decades on, there are more than 4,000 cat cafés on our map. About 2,900 are in Asia, around 520 in Europe and about 510 in the US, Canada and Mexico. The two models live side by side. At least 40% of the cafés we list offer their cats for adoption, while others, like the original in Taipei and the big Japanese chains, keep resident cats. You can browse them all on our world map or read how cat cafés work before your first visit.
Many of the pioneers are still open: Kitten Coffee Garden in Taipei, Neko no Jikan in Osaka, Respublika Koshek in St Petersburg, Café Neko in Vienna, Katzentempel in Munich, Le Café des Chats in Paris, Cat Town in Oakland and Meow Parlour in New York.
Visiting Kitten Coffee Garden
Cats among the tables at Kitten Coffee Garden in 2015. Photo: ironypoisoning, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr
Kitten Coffee Garden (our listing) is across the road from exit 1 of Zhishan station on the MRT Tamsui line, in Shilin. About a dozen cats and two dogs live there; the oldest cat, known as Sister, was born in 2010. At its busiest the café had more than 20 cats.
There is no entry ticket, but each person must spend at least NT$200, and drinks and desserts start at about that price. Visits are limited to two hours, children under 12 are not allowed, and it takes cash only. Staff feed the cats, and visitors may not. It is open from noon to 10pm and closed on Tuesdays and public holidays, and you can reserve a table by phone on 02-2835-3335. It fills up at weekends, so a weekday afternoon is the best time to go.
One of Kitten Coffee Garden’s cats in 2015. Photo: ironypoisoning, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr
The café is old-fashioned in the best way: two simple rooms, cushions and beds for the animals, and rules about not picking the cats up printed on every table. The walls of the bathroom are covered with photos of the cats who have lived there since 1998.
For the rest of Taiwan’s cat cafés, from Taipei to Kaohsiung, see our guide to cat cafés in Taiwan.
