There’s a small island off the coast of southern Japan so overrun with cats that it makes internet cat videos look like a cheap ball of yarn. But before you start booking expensive airfare, try relaxing at Mauhaus Cat Cafe and Lounge, a new spot that caters to felines and the good people who endlessly share their memes. Co-owners Dana Huth and Ben Triola opened the cafe as a space where people can leisurely bond with and potentially adopt the animals while enjoying lunch or fresh pastries. They also co-own a software company, video game development studio and real estate investments, but said that helping animals in need is worth the stress – and the cat snuggles don’t hurt, either. Here, the couple talk about why a cat makes for a programmer’s best friend.
Getting Attached
“Basically, we’re like a big foster family for these cats, except that we also serve coffee and food. … The adoptions can be a little tough on us but ultimately it’s a very happy thing to find these cats a good home. We partner with Tenth Life Cat Rescue and they have over 100 cats in foster homes, but right now they’re almost at capacity. If we can help get cats adopted, that means Tenth Life can take in more.” –B.T.
“The cat cafes in Asia are full of specialty cats, and they’re not adoptable. Every time you go, you see the same cats. But we knew that was a problem here – so many cats need homes and so many get killed at shelters every year. … I cried when the last ones that got adopted left. I had a very special connection to those cats. But it’s so good; they have great homes.” –D.H.
Cat Magic
“We were not at all planning on opening another business until we went to this cat cafe in Thailand. We were like, ‘We have to have this at home.’ What was most magical about it was not that there were cats, but that there were so many. It’s not like going into someone’s house who has three cats. To see like 15 cats living in a space, and you get to come in, be surrounded – you get to experience their home. … And to have really nice food, that was definitely a bonus.” –D.H.
Bring on the Fun
“This is talked about a lot in the game development industry: fun is really hard to plan for. It can be really elusive … you don’t know on paper if XYZ is going to be fun, so you have to build something and then play with it and then go back and figure out which parts were fun and which weren’t. There’s a lot of iteration. We call it ‘finding the fun.’ I think that’s kind of what we’re trying to do with the cat cafe – find the fun and share it with other people.” –B.T.
Cuteness Overload
“Any morning we come into the cafe, it’s basically a stampede of cats coming toward the door to all get attention.” –D.H.
Cat Therapy
“There’s this thing in programming, where if you have a problem you’re supposed to get a rubber duck and explain the problem to the rubber duck. In the course of explaining the problem out loud, you usually find the solution. But I think you can use the cats just as well – explain your problems to the cat and you might just figure some things out.” –B.T.
Interoffice Romance
“I feel really lucky that this is our life. It works really well for us because we’ve known each other so long, we think on the same wavelength. I think for a lot of people that could be difficult – spending that much time with your significant other, but I really wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ve worked with a lot of people, had other partners, and it’s not that any of those were necessarily bad, but I’ve never been able to communicate with anyone better than I can communicate with Dana. It makes sense that we do pretty much all things together.” –B.T.
Heather Hughes and Kevin Korinek contributed to this article.
This article appears in January 2017.