A cat cafe in Dubai hopes to find new homes to house them

The owners of the Ailuromania cafe, or cat lover cafe in Dubai, which opened in 2015 as a temporary shelter for 25 cats, hope to find permanent homes to shelter them from among the café-goers.

The café, cat-loving Ala and Eman Farid, was founded after completing their university studies and was inspired by similar cafes in Korea and London.

The original inhabitants of the café were stray cats that its founders had collected over the years. But now the café is also hosting cats from a government-run animal shelter in the neighboring emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, in the hope that the adoption will increase by patrons.

The café has regular patrons who seek to relax from the stress of life with cats or because they cannot raise cats in their homes.

The Cat Café has reopened amid restrictions regarding carrying capacity and the use of disinfectants since Dubai began lifting the restrictions on the Coronavirus last summer.

In 2018, the UAE authorities made the abandonment of animals against the law, but animal rights activists in Dubai have been calling for years for a large-scale plan to sterilize these animals and programs to feed them in order to reduce their numbers in a humane manner.

In August, Dubai Municipality issued a circular imposing a fine on anyone caught feeding stray animals, saying this increases disease outbreaks.

Source: “Reuters”