The Happy Pod: Celebrating the wedding that never happened

Bad luck and witchcraft. Whereas for others they are pets to love and live with. Omotayo Daniel, also known as Jason the cat guy, opened the city's first cat cafe. He's been speaking to my colleague Inkechia Ogbona. We have about 12 resident cats at the cat cafe presently. The way you call them residents sounds like it's an orphanage home. I think the most cats I've had in my space is this 16. I've had 16 cats in my space before. Do people ever come into the cafe frightened of the cats? And have you seen anyone's attitude change? A lot, A lot, a lot. I feel like that's one of the beauty of, you know, still building in the pet space, especially in the cat space. Because when most people come to the space there's always this, they're open minded first of all because you already cat cafe. So it's like you want to know what these creatures look like, you want to experience what they are like as well. So they're open minded about coming to the space. So when you come in they let you know that, oh, this is my first time in cat, I'm really afraid. Some of them are very calm, some of them are very collected, some of them will shout and say, hey, please be careful to let this car jump on you. And the next few minutes, because you book per session, right? It's an hour session. The next few minutes we introduce kittens first because kittens are very calm and they're less, they're less frightening. The next few minutes they're already, you know, rubbing the cat's body, you know, playing with the cats. And then they hear things like why was I ever afraid of cats in the first place? Then like why? And that's the realization most people usually have when they come to our space. And that's the beautiful thing. So I mean we've had people come to the space and then a lot of misconceptions have been debunked just by interacting with the cats in our cafe. And speaking of misconceptions being debunked, what do you hope this cafe would achieve on the long run? So the new approach you've been taking so far is trying to integrate cat in your usual activities, right? So what we've transitioned with the cat cafe community is trying to even make people know that your regular activities, cats can be present, you know, so we've been doing that and by doing that, you know, it's usually softer, it's more, you're not really getting reactions because people are really judging their fun activities. They're not agitated. When you see people, they don't jump at you, they don't run at you. So you see them doing their things and you know that. Please. That staring that your activity I do just makes you just know that cats can also exist there. I think that's what I want to build the community as well. I want people to know that with all your activities, with all the major, major things happening in your life, you can have a cat present and still do your thing. Just get. And don't have to be frightened or scared because cats are pretty much independent creatures at the end of the day. That was Omatan.