تفسیر درس

Cat Cafes – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Cat Cafes. Now as I mentioned a couple of times in the conversation, I love this idea. I think it’s a great idea to have these cat cafes. If you’ve been a member of Advanced Conversation Club, ACC, for any length of time you probably realize at this time that I’m an animal lover.

And not only am I an animal lover but I absolutely love cats. I grew up with cats my whole life. I can remember my very first cat, and I say my cat because our family, we always had many cats. But my cat, who I really…one of our cats that I really connected with strongly, her name was Smoky and we got her when I was maybe about 7 years old. And I had her until I was 24 or 25 years old. So I…she lived to be like 17 or 18 years old. That’s a really long time.

So I had her growing up. She was my companion animal, if you remember that from the vocab lesson. She kept me company. She was my friend from such an early age, 6 or 7 years up, you know, through grammar…what am I trying to say…elementary school and then high school, all the way through college or university as you may know it, same thing, college and university, even past college I had her. That’s a really long time. And she was a great friend.

And then when I was in college I got another cat as well and I had…he didn’t live quite as long. His name was Sigmund, although I called him Siggy. He lived to be about 14 years old, eh, 14 or 16. So he actually…cats can live to be 17, 18, 19, 20 I’ve heard of, even on up into the 20s. Cats can live to be longer than dogs actually. He didn’t live quite as long as cats can because he developed cancer so he had something that started, it was cancer in his eye so something actually started growing down in his eye and he ended up dying from that. But he was a great friend as well.

So I’ve always loved cats and have been very close with them. And that’s why I go and volunteer at one of the animal shelters here in San Francisco. Remember a shelter, an animal shelter, is a place that takes in homeless dogs and cats and keeps them until someone comes to take them and give them a home forever.

So I go in and I volunteer with the cats. And, y’know, as it was mentioned in the conversation, as it was talked about in the conversation, one good thing about these cat cafes is that people who don’t have cats of their own can go in and spend time with them. That’s why I go into the animal shelter to visit with the cats. I try to go in once a week. But the cat cafes will be nice, too. I’ll be able to go in and do work because they’ll have WiFi so I can go in and do my work there and have cats around me.

It’s great because I really miss having cats and Joe and I live in an apartment that does not allow them actually. But not only that, even if it was allowed, even if it was okay to have them, we travel two to three

months sometimes each year and so it’s…that makes it very difficult to care for a cat when you’re going to be gone for that amount of time. So it’s also, as it was talked about in the conversation, for some people it’s the commitment, it’s the responsibility that makes it difficult to have cats.

So I’m very excited that there is the cat cafe here in San Francisco called KitTea. We didn’t talk about the name in the conversation but it’s a…it’s a cute name. If you’ll remember, kitty is a kind of a cute nickname for a cat or a kitten. The name of this cat cafe is Kit and then tea. So it sounds like kitty but it looks like KitTea, tea because tea as in the drink, you know you drink tea. Because if you remember in the conversation I…I think it was me…I talked about how this one here in San Francisco is going to have tea for sale. So that’s why the name is kind of a…kind of a cute, clever or smart name.

The one in Oakland is actually called Oak…sorry, Cat Town Cafe. So I actually was reading, Cat Town Cafe was actually a group of people who were volunteering at the city animal shelter in Oakland. They started a group on their own of rescuing cats, taking in cats who needed homes. And they decided then, this group of volunteers, and they called themselves Cat Town, cat rescue organization. So they decided then to start the Cat Town Cafe.

But that’s over in Oakland which is a city not very far from San Francisco but I don’t go over there very often. I believe, I think, I just read on the internet that they have actually opened at this point in time. The one here in San Francisco, KitTea, has still not opened so I guess the Cat Town Cafe will be the very first one here in the United States.

I also just read that there’s going to be a second one here in San Francisco and it’s going to be called the Green Cat Rescue Cafe. This one’s going to be opened by a woman who has another job, her job is grooming animals. So what that means is she…she bathes or she washes dogs, sometimes cats, even though cats don’t like water, sometimes they need to have baths.

So she bathes or washes cats and dogs. She clips or cuts their toenails or their claws. What else is done in grooming? She cuts the hair on dogs, on certain dogs. Their owners want them to have a certain look so she might cut hair or…and sometimes that happens on cats, too, if their hair starts getting…getting really tangled or getting, y’know, in knots because it hasn’t been brushed.

And so this is just going to be a second business for her. And the interesting thing is that when she registered her business with the City of San Francisco she did it at about the same time, or actually she even did it before KitTea and they didn’t…neither, neither her nor the people who are opening KitTea even realized that either…they weren’t aware of the other one. So KitTea didn’t know that this woman was starting Green Cat Rescue Cafe and the woman opening Green Cat Rescue Cafe didn’t know about

KitTea. So it’s kind of…it’s very interesting to me how there’s three cat cafes starting here in this area, none of them even knew about the other two.

So Green Cat Rescue Cafe, oh, what I was saying is she has her own business so she’s actually obviously not going…she’s not going to be relying on this business of the cat cafe being a moneymaker for her. She’s not going to be focusing on the money of that cafe because she plans to donate the money that she makes from it to the city animal shelter here in San Francisco, which I think is wonderful.

And she’s also going to bring in people to speak about behavioral problems they might…people might find they have with their cats or how to clip, y’know, speakers, people talking about how people can learn how to cut or clip their cat’s claws. She’s really going to be focusing on educating people about cats, which is also, I think, a great idea. So all three of these places are a little bit different but they’re the same in that they, y’know, they’re all very creative business ideas that help with a cause and that cause being homeless cats.

So sometimes, y’know, people see a problem in the world and they wonder how they can help. They wonder how they can be of help. And they…y’know, maybe they…they want to do something to help but maybe the problem, it seems overwhelming or trying to think of a way to help it might seem like it’s just too much, too much to try and do anything. And then they don’t ever end up doing anything.

So I think that this conversation or actually not the conversation, but the idea of these cat cafes, I think is a great example of people who have, who recognized or realized a problem, homeless cats. And they wanted to help and so they’ve started…they’ve come up with a very unique, unique meaning different, business. It’s very creative as well. So there’s…also it’s not just helping the cats.

It’s helping people, too. Someone like me would love to have a cat but I can’t. I can’t because of where I live and also I can’t take…I can’t have the responsibility knowing I travel two to three months each year. So it goes…it helps people, it helps cats. And it just shows that there is all kinds of possibilities of fun and different ways to come up with or have some sort of business that helps out with some kind of problem or cause.

Now I’m just wondering if there’s ever been a problem or cause that you’ve felt you wanted to help out with and didn’t quite know what to do. If so, share with us on the Ning site. Let us know what that…what that was, that problem or that cause you really wanted to help with. Let us know, we’d love to hear from you and maybe, y’know, the cat cafe idea is very inspiring.

Maybe this could inspire you, if there ever was a business you were trying to start to help out with something, maybe it will inspire you to come up with a unique or different idea, because there’s all kinds of things, all kinds of fun ways, fun and interesting ways to help.

Alright, this concludes the commentary for the conversation Cat Cafes. Have a great month and I’ll see you again.