A Cafe for Cat People Opens Downtown

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at a cat cafe on the Lower East Side where people can play with cats who live there or are up for adoption.

On Sunday, Christina Ha threw open the doors to the brand-new Essex Street home of Meow Parlour, her cat cafe.

In the cafe, which Ha, 38, says was the first of its kind in New York City, human visitors can snack on food and drinks — they buy them next door, in a space with a separate entrance and address to abide by New York City health code — while they play with cats who either live there permanently or are up for adoption.

At 18,000 square feet, the space is three times as large as its previous iteration, which Ha co-founded 10 years ago around the corner on Hester Street. While the old space could accommodate 15 cats, this one can fit more than 20, and the space is designed to be a feline paradise.

“The cats who had been in the previous space were like, ‘What is all this other stuff?’” Ha said.

There are booths where humans can relax while cats climb above them on shelves and peek down at them. The walls are lined with circular holes for cats to climb through to get from room to room. There is a bookshelf for them to explore, and a tree with hammocks hanging off the branches for snoozes.

“The kittens figured out how to climb the steps to get up there right away,” Ha said. “They hopped into the hammocks and went to sleep.”

The space, which served as a boxing gym before the pandemic, came with a prebuilt sophisticated ventilation system, “because gyms can be really smelly,” Ha said. On opening day, patrons remarked about how nice the place smelled.

The new space can also accommodate 14 to 18 visitors per hour, an upgrade that is allowing Meow Parlour to allow walk-ins for the first time. “On opening day, it was incredible to allow people in who saw us from the street,” Ha said.

The cafe part of Meow Parlour, which sells boxes of macarons, pizza rolls, iced tea and coffee drinks among other items, is awaiting inspection and should open in the next few weeks. Ha, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education baking program, is the head pastry chef. Her partner in the venture is Emilie Legrand, 41, who was one of the first kitchen employees of Meow Parlour.

Meow Parlour also acts as a cat adoption agency, sourcing cats from Animal Care Centers of New York, a local animal shelter, and the Bowling Green Warren County Humane Society in Bowling Green, Ky., which brings cats to New York who can’t find homes in Kentucky.

Ha started the entire endeavor in 2014 after she and her husband, Simon Tung, 42, found a kitten outside their apartment in Chinatown. “We found Mr. Socks, took him home and went full-blown cat lady,” she said. “We adopted Pickles afterward and started fostering.”

Meow Parlour now has between 50 and 70 cats in its program at any time. They either live at the cafe or in foster homes. The goal of the new space is to be able to offer them more services.

The cafe set up a surgical center in the basement where a local veterinarian is doing spay and neuter surgeries. “Our goal is to start taking in more senior animals, getting them fixed, cleaned up and ready for adoption,” Ha said.

There are also two walled-off rooms for special needs cats who require their own space for a host of reasons. They are currently occupied by Thunder, who “has complicated feelings for other cats,” as Ha puts it, and Homer, who is on a special protein diet and can’t risk sharing food with his companions.

“We call these our V.I.P. rooms,” Ha said. “That is something we never thought we would have.”

Weather

Prepare for a chance of showers and thunderstorms, persisting through the evening, with daytime temperatures in the mid-60s. At night, it will be windy, with temperatures in the mid-50s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

Suspended today (Eid al-Fitr).

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