Why shouldn’t there be a cat cafe on every corner? In every town and city across America? If current cat cafe trends prevail, we may soon live in such idyllic world.
Why shouldn’t there be a cat cafe on every corner? Cheshire Grin Cat Cafe opened in August 2019. It is the St. Louis areas’s 2nd cat cafe.
2019 was the biggest year yet for U.S. cat cafes, with nearly forty cat cafes opening across the country. Many of these cafes are in quite unexpected, even surprising places. Five years into this crazy cat cafe trend, let’s take a deep dive into the biggest year yet.
You miss a minute, you miss a lot of new cat cafes. If it seems like cat cafes are popping up faster than kittens in June, you are correct. Following strong and steady growth in the U.S.since 2014, the number of cat cafes jumped over forty percent in 2019.
Lucky for you, we do the good work of keeping the cat cafe map and guide up-to-the minute and accurate.
Wondering where all the cat cafes are
With so many new cat cafes, aren’t we all just wondering: is there a cat cafe near me? Predictably
, U.S. cat cafes first appeared in the country’s largest cities and on the coasts. Six years later, it is game on across the country.
The cat cafes that opened in 2019 are split nearly evenly between small and large cities. A full fifty-three percent of the new U.S. cafes are in cities with populations under 100k people. An interesting statistic for sure , but the numbers tell a compelling cat tale.
Think your little town is too small for a cat cafe? Think again. Nearly a third of all the cat cafes that opened in 2019 debuted small towns with populations under thirty thousand people. Of these small town cafes, only three are part of much larger metropolitan areas (Patriot Pawsabilities, Meows Corner, and Caffeinated Cat).
In fact, most of these small town cat cafes are in very small towns indeed. Sixteen percent of all the cafes opened in 2019 are in towns of less than ten thousand people. The new Calico Cat Cafe & Barkery is in small and remote Zillah Washington with only three thousand residents.
The smallest town, small town cat cafe of them all is K.A.T. Cafe in New Market, Maryland. With only seven hundred residents, the lucky people of little New Market have a big time cat cafe right on Main Street. Let’s just go ahead and call New Market the best small town for cat lovers in America!
The purrfect small town cat cafe: K.A.T. Cafe in New Market, Maryland
We know what you’re thinking. Shoot, if little New Market can have their very own cat cafe, my town can too. And your instincts are correct. It is not the size of the city that predicts success, but the heart of the community for animals.
