Meet Meowtropolitan, Seattle's First Cat Cafe

The first cat cafe in America opened in Oakland last weekend, with feline coffee shops in the works in cities across the U.S., including L.A., New York, Denver--and Seattle. Seattle Meowtropolitan is hunting for a permanent home in Captiol Hill with plans to open in 2015. What we know: If funded, the coffeehouse will be filled with adoptable cats from local shelters and serve coffee from Herkimer. A Kickstarter campaign will launch next month. And the space will be "fantasy-themed":

Our vision is to have a fantasy-themed space (think Game of Thrones) where you will play with the cats. We want to put it somewhere easily accessible so we can build a community hub for cat people. Hopefully we can find a space in Capitol Hill, or somewhere near there. How soon we open will depend on community support. We will largely depend on crowd-funding, so follow us closely.

For a visual of what Seattle's first cat cafe might look like, check out these photos of Oakland's Cat Town Cafe over on Eater San Francisco. The original cat cafe started in Taiwan, then spread to Tokyo in the early aughts. More questions? Vox has a new video tracing the short history of the cat cafe phenomenon.

Eater Video: The Mysterious Rise of the Cat Cafe