Cats in a Cat Café: Individual Cat Behavior and Interactions with Humans
Elin N. Hirsch, Belén Navarro Rivero, Maria Andersson

TL;DR
This study examines how cats in a Swedish cat café use space and interact with humans and other cats, finding that they prefer elevated and quiet areas to avoid stress.
Contribution
The study provides new insights into cat behavior in cafés and suggests design improvements to enhance feline welfare.
Findings
Cats prefer elevated structures and hiding spots, especially when many customers are present.
Cat–cat interactions are rare and mostly affiliative, suggesting avoidance as a conflict-reduction strategy.
Cats show varied responses to human visitors, ranging from seeking contact to avoiding interaction.
Abstract
Cat cafés, where visitors can spend time with cats and even adopt them, are becoming more common. While these cafés are enjoyable for people, it is less clear how they affect the cats that live there. In this study, we observed 27 cats living in a Swedish cat café to understand how they utilized the space, interacted with one another, and responded to human visitors. We found that cats often preferred elevated places, such as shelves or cat trees, and quiet hiding spots, especially when there were many customers in the café. Interactions between cats were rare and usually friendly, while cats’ responses to people varied from seeking contact to choosing to rest out of reach. These findings indicate that cats in cafés require sufficient space to allow them to choose whether to interact or withdraw. Designing cat cafés with vertical structures, separate rooms unavailable for customers, and…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsHuman-Animal Interaction Studies · Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies · Veterinary Practice and Education Studies
