NEW YORK » Madeline Weinstein was reaching for the top of the shelves at Meow Parlour, New York’s new cat cafe, going for the ultimate prize: Roger, the most antisocial animal in the place. Down below, on floor level, nine other cats roamed, batting at toys, leaping exuberantly, bumping heads affectionately against the outstretched hands of customers. Roger remained aloof.

Weinstein, an actress who lives in Manhattan, extended the tips of her fingers to Roger’s nose. He took an exploratory sniff. She worked her hand behind his ears and began to scratch lightly. Roger began to thaw, then melt.

"I have two cats, so it’s kind of absurd that I’m here and paying for this," Weinstein said. "But I can’t get too much cat in my life."

Christina Ha, who opened Meow Parlour on Hester Street in mid-December with her husband, Simon Tung, is betting that the city is full of people who can’t get too much cat. The concept has been tried successfully in cities all over the world, notably in Japan, a cat-crazy country where landlords tend to prohibit pets. Why not New York?

Ha was already in the food business and, in a sense, the cat business, too. She and her husband run Macaron Parlour, a patisserie with two locations, in the East Village and the Upper West Side. A couple of years ago, she took in a stray that she found outside her apartment in Chinatown. She named him Mr. Socks.

"I’d never had a cat before, and I was not expecting to like this one so much, especially considering he doesn’t seem to like me," she said. Mr. Socks soon had company, when Ha adopted Pickle and Poussey from Kitty Kind, a cat rescue and adoption agency, and acquired a fourth cat, Bobo, for good measure. After a hoarder released 30 cats near the Macaron Parlour on Columbus Avenue, Ha began fostering strays, and developed a close relationship with Kitty Kind.

That’s when one of her assistant chefs, Emilie Legrand, began talking about cat cafes. Legrand, a lifelong cat lover who brought her two cats with her when she moved from Paris to New York, had visited cat cafes in Paris and Tokyo and sold Ha of the concept.

"We decided we need a cat cafe in New York," Ha said. "We really need this."

The New York Health Department, not surprisingly, does not allow food to be prepared where animals congregate. To clear that obstacle, Ha opened Meow Parlour Patisserie just around the corner on Ludlow Street, where her usual lineup of sweets, led by macarons in assorted flavors, is amplified by cat-themed cookies, some with cat faces and whiskers drawn in icing, others stamped out in cat shapes.

Customers reserve time on the Meow Parlour website (meowparlour.com), at a rate of $4 a half-hour, or $30 for the maximum stay of five hours. The cafe is almost fully booked through mid-March, and walk-ins are not accepted. Children under 10 may visit only on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, but one child and one adult get a discounted rate of $12 an hour for both.

Check-in consists of two steps. First, you sign a waiver — this can be done online in advance — agreeing to the dos and don’ts. Do not feed the cats. Do not wake a sleeping cat (gentle petting is OK). Do not pick up a cat without an employee’s permission. Do not use flash photography. Second, at the front desk, you take off your shoes and apply hand sanitizer. Once the formalities are taken care of, the cats await.

Actually, they have probably already made contact. The cafe has a picture window looking onto Hester Street with a long shelf and the word "meow" spelled out in oversize wooden letters. The cats like to sit on the shelf and watch the passing parade, or lounge among the letters, especially the "O."

Past the front desk is a large room with throw pillows, hexagonal lounging stations with cat beds inside and glass on top, and a big wall-size set of shelves with lots of nooks and crannies and countertops extending from them where customers can pull up tall metal stools, set up a laptop (the cafe has free Wi-Fi) and order from the Meow Parlour Patisserie.

Most people grab a cat toy from the front desk, head straight to the play area and entice the cats, who do what cats do. Some stare impassively, then wander off. Others observe, taking mental notes. And others go wild, swatting, chasing, stalking and pouncing, or accept, with gratitude, petting and deep massage. If questions arise, a cat docent is on hand.

Last Friday the docent was Drew Kimmis, who fielded queries like "Do all cats land on their feet?" and related the personal histories and personality quirks of the inmates. Cisco, a tortoiseshell, has three legs because she was hit by a car. Lucky Lemon, a plus-size marmalade cat, was slow to acclimate but now socializes well. Liz, a tabby in constant search of a warm human lap, forms a tightly bonded pair with her brother, Kris. Roger, mostly white with random black splotches and a black nose, is shy, as is his sister, Carmen. "When we first got him, he hissed at me the entire day, and his sister hid under a wheel," Ha said.

Further guidance can be found on the Wall o’ Cats. Across from the front desk, it provides photo portraits of most of the residents, with salient information including birthday, "purrsonality type" ("cheerleader," "B.F.F.") and likes and dislikes. It may or may not be true that Puddin’ "dislikes straw-man arguments."

All the cats are available for adoption from Kitty Kind, so the profiles not only satisfy idle curiosity, they also help interested parties make a decision.

"I like to let people know that we care about the cats, that we’re not just here to make money off them," Kimmis said. "We want them to get adopted and find a good home."

If nothing else, the cats get a workout and the kind of adoration usually reserved for celebrities on the red carpet. Last Friday, as soon as the doors opened at noon, a cluster of female admirers — the cafe’s demographic skews heavily female — converged like paparazzi on the most photogenic cats, iPhones in hand, then settled in for intense one-on-one love encounters and personal-training sessions so vigorous that after about an hour torpor descended, and, one by one, the cats wandered off for a deep snooze.

Who goes, and why? Love of the cat is the common denominator, but after that, the consensus breaks down. Weinstein had an audition looming and decided that a little quality cat time might calm her nerves. Ryan Green, of Brooklyn, said that her partner, who is allergic to cats, gave her a visit to the cat cafe as a Christmas present. Michelle Betz and Hector Martinez, of West Milford, N.J., who have an 18-year-old cat, go every weekend to Petco to look at the cats up for adoption.

"But they’re behind glass or in cages, so you don’t get the interaction," Betz said.

If it’s interaction you want, Julian is your cat. A goofball of the highest order, he distinguished himself by muscling in on Ringo, a sleek black cat who was batting a ball dangling on the end of a string. With a powerful leap, Julian went for the ball and landed right on top of Ringo. Several nearby cats scattered in dismay.

That was just a warm-up. Julian caught a whiff of something sweet and baked on one of the tables and, in an instant, sprang up, landed with all four legs splayed out and slid across the smooth wooden surface of the table. Then he ate the ear off a cat cookie.

Can someone please take this cat home?

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