The Brooklyn Cat Cafe — Restaurant in New York

Even though they take wonderful care of the cats and kittens here, I had an overall very awful and sad experience at this cafe. There was a misunderstanding initially about me being able to adopt a cat (an employee named Sonja told me I should definitely be able to adopt them both) but one of them had a medical issue so turns out both of them were not up for adoption since they were bonded and were not allowed to be separated. I did not find out this information until 15 days after I initially put in my adoption request and references.

I personally traveled to the cafe two more times just to ask for updates on my application. I believed if I never went out of my way, I would have never gotten a response to my application. And then I was finally told by a store manager that they would not allow me to adopt the cat I wanted even thought I was led on for two weeks to believe that I could.

I expressed my frustration over email with the management and instead of the employee Sonja at least apologizing for giving me false information during my first visit, she responded with an heinously rude email, even claiming that she remembered me refusing to pay for my first visit (I never visited a cat cafe before so I did not know I had to pay for my visit, and I gladly paid for my Mom and I after I was told the cost).

I also want to emphasize that during this email, employee Sonja told me that an application for the cat I wanted had come in a day before I put in my application. Which is incorrect because the manager Julia was just processing my adoption the day before, right before she was informed by the manager Anne that they actually could not let me adopt that cat. So that tells me that employee Sonja decided to rudely dismiss me by falsely claiming that the cat I wanted had already been adopted (which implies that she does this often with any interested potential adopters that she feels like dismissing, despite time, effort and money they may have already put into the process). So please be aware of this if you’re trying to adopt from them!

I had an okay experience with the manager Anne. She did greet me at one point, refusing to shake my hand and saying “Yes I know who you are” but then she kindly spoke to me and my friend and explained and apologized for the lack of communication/professionalism on their end. She even emailed me after the fact, but when I responded (in a long heartfelt email) asking if my Mom and I could potentially adopt another cat that we were interested in, she ignored my email and never responded. She also never apologized for the disgusting way I was treated by the rude employee Sonja. To this day (over a month later now), I have not received a response.

I was also told by store manager Julia that there had been a lot of turnover with the cafe’s staff right before the new year, so that was part of the reason for their delayed adoption process. In conclusion, because I expressed my frustration with their inefficient adoption process, I was insulted and rudely dismissed by employee Sonja, then banned from adopting any cats at all by manager Anne.

I’m grateful for my friend who went with me and provided me emotional support, or else I definitely would have had an emotional breakdown from the way I was treated by these people. He also assured to me that they were the ones in the wrong here and strongly lacked decent and empathetic customer services skills.

Anyway, I respect the loving way they take care of their cats, but still felt like I needed to share this. For anyone who is looking to adopt, work or volunteer at this cat cafe. Definitely don’t express any negative emotions at all with the upper management, or else they will cry “miscommunications!” and ban you from adopting all together. Even if you’ve already spent a month in the adoption...

The one girl with the long Island accent had a bad attitude — reservations are virtually pointless because they never tell anyone to leave, leading the place to be extremely overcrowded, often by people who seemingly have no respect of others' space. Reservations are needless barriers to entry, besides raising money to sustain the business. The time slots for the reservations are irrelevant because there is no control over whether people are arriving or leaving on time, and the front desk provides a lengthy set of rules and regulations before your entry. The remaining staff were friendly and welcoming, knowledgeable about the cats, and were open to talking about the cats with anybody passing by.

There seemed to be several unattended children, but fortunately staff intervened when a child began throwing a tantrum and screeching, by telling the parents they will need to do something about the child. The amount of children wandering around hitting cats and people in the face with toys was concerning.

Unfortunately, this place is not a "cafe" at all, as there does not appear to be anything to eat besides the cat treats. Water or coffee would have been nice, but we knew what to expect.

Lastly, masks are required and sold for a dollar. I hope that this is because they are concerned about the safety and wellbeing of the cats, not that they're the only business in New York following a mask mandate that is no longer enforced by any business on the block.

Over all, the experience was enjoyable as a majority of the staff are friendly, and so are most of the cats; however, I'd recommend that the store employs a security guard to actually address some of the overcrowding and make the reservations actually have a purpose besides charging $10 per person. On the face of things, you'd expect the $10/30 minutes per person to be a solid way to raise money and reduce crowding, but it doesn't. Dedicated staff to address this would fix this problem. My last comment would be — serve food, water... Something! Assuming, of course, the masks are...

I visited this cat cafe recently and was honestly disappointed. I was excited to spend time with the cats, but none of them were affectionate. Most of them seemed to dislike human interaction and didn’t want to engage at all. It felt more like we were intruding in their space than visiting a cat cafe meant for bonding with animals.

One of the cats even scratched me on the wrist. I understand that cats can be unpredictable, and if they don’t want human interaction, that’s totally fine they have feelings too, and they deserve to be respected. But I blame the staff for putting them through constant human traffic every day, which clearly frustrates them and leads to behaviors like scratching or biting.

They make you sign a long waiver right when you walk in, and there’s barely any time to actually read it. It feels like a way to avoid taking any responsibility for anything that might happen during your visit. The excuse seems to be that the cats are homeless rescues with traumatic pasts which is understandable but that doesn’t justify the lack of accountability or the way the experience is managed. People come here to spend money, after all, and the least they deserve is a safe, transparent, and well run environment.

They do color-code the cats’ collars based on their level of aggression, but trust me any of them can be aggressive regardless of the collar color. These are rescue animals with unpredictable behavior, and the color system doesn’t prevent scratches or bites, especially when there’s little staff supervision or guidance. It ends up putting both the cats and the guests in an uncomfortable situation.

I don’t recommend this place for hyper kids since they might want to pet the cats and end up getting hurt. The environment isn’t safe or enjoyable for people expecting a calm, interactive experience.

Overall, the concept is cute, but the execution is careless. The staff needs to be more attentive and prioritize the well-being of both the cats and...