Remember how I told you that I am confident that there is a market for The Cat Cafe because of the reception they’ve had in London and Paris and because of the long waits they’ve seen? Now I don’t have to tell people about cat cafes in Europe and Asia. I can point to one in Canada.

North America’s first permanent cat cafe, Le Cafe des Chats, opened Montreal this past weekend and I think it’s safe to say that the opening was a huge success. One visitor had to wait in line for 40 minutes in order to get in. Staff said this was necessary in order to avoid stressing the cats on the first day of operations.

Another visitor said that the scene was borderline chaos and added “the cats were the most civilized out of everyone.”

The eight cats present seemed to handle the craziness on opening day in stride. There is one major difference between the operations of The Cat Cafe and Le Cafe des Chats, besides the language. While we both will work with animal rescue groups to find cats who are well suited to the environment, The Cat Cafe will feature cats who can be adopted. Le Cafe des Chats will not. Instead, their cats will be ambassadors and will be permanent residents.

It’s great to see the kind of reaction to this cat cafe. While you never really know until you do it yourself, seeing other cat cafes seeing such high initial demand is definitely reassuring.