[July 2021, Kyoto Japan] It all began August 2014 when we decided to open a cat café next to Fushimi Inari, Japan’s perhaps most famous shrine, with it’s hundreds of vermillion gates lining the mountain. Due to the popularity of the shrine, we wanted to create a place where one could rest and regain their strength after climbing the mountain.

At the same time, we wanted to create a safe haven for cats. In Japan, not many people are allowed to keep pets at their place of residence, yet many yearn for the company of cats and dogs alike. That is how the concept of animal cafés came to be. Though, the idea isn’t new, we wanted to do some things different from other cat cafés.

For starters, we knew that we wanted to work with rescues. So, we started talking to the local cat shelters and received a lot of information about the stray cat situation in Japan. Sadly, many cats are still euthanized if caught by the local authorities but many charities have adopted the trap-neuter-return approach. To this day we collaborate with the cat shelters and send regular donations.

Then we started building our family. Being former strays, it was hard in the beginning for the cats to get used to the new environment and each other. Even harder was to get them used to be around humans. Our staff put in a lot of love and effort into caring for the cats long before we could open the café. Then Bob came to us.

Back then, if we didn’t have Bob it’s hard to imagine how things would have gone. He became and still is the iconic leader of our family. The cats trusted him and he trusted humans which in turn led the other cats to slowly open up to us. Many of the cats adore Bob and so do we.

We have Bob to thank for a lot of things. So much that when the pandemic forced us to close down our café this year (2021) we decided that this website should be dedicated to him. It was a tough decision to close after almost 7 years. It wasn’t always a smooth ride, but we have had incredible support from all our fans. You can help out Bob and his family by purchasing goods on this website or by becoming a member in the official fanclub.