Catoro Café

 

Vancouver’s newest cat café Catoro, is a cat café with a difference. This majestic cat forest was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film – My Neighbor Totoro and it is so accurately and beautifully designed, it’s as though you have just stepped straight into the film!

The forest is a vibrant colour explosion of purples, greens, and blues. The tall, lifelike 3D trees give the illusion of being in a real forest. Whilst the cosy, warm lighting creates a calming atmosphere. This forest feels like you’ve just fallen down a rabbit hole into a quirky, cute, mysterious world that’s full of adorable kitties to play with!

I recently watched “My Neighbor Totoro” for the first time and what with it being one of my first ever anime films I wasn’t sure what to expect, and although I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more as a child, the story really is quite sweet and adorable!

I really loved the innocence of the movie, along with the music and all the super cute, loveable forest animals. The story follows two sisters called Mei and Satsuki, who have moved to rural Japan with their father, so that they can be closer to their mother, who is very sick and residing in hospital. Because their parents aren’t around much, the girls go on many adventures and make friends with these magical forest creatures. Totoro, a rather strange, giant Rabbit looking creature, a grinning cat who is shaped like a bus and some other oddly cute animals.

The girls go through a lot of emotions in the movie whilst they anxiously wait to see if their mother can come home. The story is heart-warming, visually pleasing and a lot of fun and I’m definitely going to enjoy exploring more Studio Ghibli films in the future.

Catoro cat café is designed to be a fun and completely unique place for people to visit, whilst also being a safe space for rescued cats to be adopted. There is a huge overpopulation of cats in Canada and there is said to be at least 600,000 stray cats wondering the streets, so it’s great to see businesses like Catoro help tackle this problem.

When you first enter Catoro Café you will be given a safety talk and told the forest rules before you go in. You then take off your shoes and put on some comfy slip-on shoes that are provided, this helps keep the room sanitary. They have also been taking all the necessary COVID-19 protocols since the start of the pandemic.

The cats must be in absolute cat heaven as they freely roam around the forest and back-room areas. They have easy access to resources such as food, water fountains and litter trays. There is a huge variety of different sized scratching posts, loads of little hidey holes (even within the 3D trees!) soft cosy beds, different levelled ledges to sleep and climb on and there is an abundance of toys to play with.

The café is great for shy/anti-social cats too, many of whom have been subject to cruelty & neglect. Being around people all day will help rehabilitate them, build their confidence and make them more adoptable so they can hopefully find their fur-ever homes!

There's a couple of little tables in the forest where you can sit and sip one of the many flavoured Bubble Teas available, and if you’re lucky, you may become the chosen one and get some super awesome lap cuddles with the cats!!

There is also a viewing window for anyone who just wants to sit and sip a drink without entering the forest and they also have a large selection of cat products available for sale in store and online.

The other thing I absolutely love about Catoro Café is their Zero Waste Vision. In Vancouver alone there is estimated to be 2.6 MILLION cups thrown away every WEEK! Catoro offer PLA Biodegradable cups, which you can return (or keep). If handed back in, the cups will be cleaned and broken down for in house processing, where it can then be refined to be used as 3D printer filament. This filament is then available to support the local design community!

You can also purchase single or a gift set of 100% genuine Bamboo Straws! (I own a pair; they are super cute, have the Catoro logo on them and they have lasted me 2 years so far!) These straws are eco-friendly, sustainable, compostable, and reusable!

Thanks for reading!

Sammy

Writer