The rise of cat café culture has spawned a total of five cat themed coffee shops in Singapore since Neko No Niwa’s opening in 2013. With a total of thirteen adopted cats aged between two and six years old, Neko No Niwa brings the Japanese cat café experience to the island of Singapore. At a price of $12 for your first hour and $5 for every subsequent half an hour, the ‘cat garden’ is a dream for crazy cat people, cat lovers, and want-to-be cat lovers alike.

With a complete uncertainty about even possessing a liking for cats, I gingerly climbed the stairs towards my first cat café experience. Crazy cat lady heaven, or more commonly known as Neko no Niwa, is a regular cake-and-coffee-selling-café, except that it is full of cats. These cats roam freely within an interactive space where they are groomed, played with, and photographed by doe-eyed tourists and locals, arbitrarily picking their favourite cat as the one that ‘lovingly looked at them’ (my favourite ended up being the tortoiseshell cat, Luna, despite the fact that she refused ever to come within two feet of me). A collection of cat related literature covers the back wall, including To Cats, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Living with a Cat, A Street Car Named Bob, All I need to know I Learned from my Cat, I am a Cat, etc. Holes, alleys, boxes, toys, and a carrot-shaped bed for the cats to interact with littered the enclosed interaction area.

I was sceptical about the concept of cat cafés; I was sceptical of enclosing cats into a restricted space for many hours without the freedom to roam their city; I was sceptical of the manner in which these cats were treated, commodified for the visitor’s amusement; and I was sceptical of visitors mistreating the cats, waking them up simply for the purpose of a new profile picture.

I was surprised.

Well treated, playful, and, most importantly, given a safe environment to live in, Neko no Niwa promotes the message that all cats, even homeless and abandoned ones, deserve to have a home. The café encourages the visitor to not only to enjoy the therapeutic setting of the café but to learn about the cats themselves.