Animeal Cafe in Osaka

America-mura in Osaka is home to many pet cafes, including some of our favorites. On a recent trip, as we were strolling around aimlessly, we happened upon an animal cafe that promised not one type of animal, not two, but [remember to count before you post this blog]!! Welcome to Animeal Cafe!

Billed as a “forest cafe,” Animeal takes up two floors in a small building. By paying a reasonable fee, you get a drink and the chance to play with animals on both floors for one hour, taking the elevator between the levels. There are strict rules because some of these animals can bite and scratch, and some can be fed while some cannot.

There are different animals for different times of day. In the early afternoon, you can meet a capybara and goat, while in the afternoon, here’s who you will see on the lower level:

There were some snakes and lizards in glass tanks, ferrets, hedgehogs, a binturong, some sleepy cats, and several owls who would occasionally fly past! You can’t pet the snakes and owls, but they are around. The cats down here didn’t want to play much. You also can’t feed those animals, but there were some you could feed.

Look at these little hedgehogs! They mostly sleep (sometimes in little wooden houses) until they smell a spoonful of food, at which point they wake up and nibble on it. They’re for feeding more than petting, so they don’t do much other than wake up, eat, and go back to sleep. However, one guy was very itchy and scratched himself. Chubby boy had short legs!

I wondered how they kept the owls from eating the hedgehogs, since in my mind if I were an owl, I totally would. Apparently they feed the owls a lot to keep them from getting too hungry. There was one owl who was so full he declined food offered to him by one of the helpful employees (the staff here was very calm and friendly).

You have to put on gloves to feet the ferrets, since they can scratch and bite. You also have to go inside a little gazebo since they immediately try to escape the moment they are set down. Their food is like a paste, and they gobbled it up quickly. The white guy even chewed on the spoon.

As we tried to take pictures, the white guy kept running from me and trying to leap out of the enclosure, so the staff had to pick him up and hand him back to me repeatedly. Eriko’s guy made friends quickly, curling up in her lap and going to sleep. So cuuuuuuute!

This, my friends, is a binturong. What’s a binturong? It’s this thing. We’d never heard of it either, and kept forgetting the name until I realized it sounds like “been too long.” He just chilled up in the rafters, and we fed him bananas and bits of fruit on little skewers. I envy his life.

After spending half an hour downstairs, we took the elevator to the upper level for the second part of our cafe journey.

The upper level is more relaxed, and has seats where you can plop down and pet the animals that just wander around freely. There’s half a dozen dogs, several cats, and a pig who seemed more interested in chewing his own lips and drooling everywhere than anything else.

The cats eyed us suspiciously as we sat down, and the dogs ran around play-fighting with one another. We wanted to pet the husky, but he didn’t like the smell of the hand sanitizer so even though he wanted to rub up against us, when we reached for him, he walked away. He later got into a little fight with a very angry-looking chubby boi.

Then this happened:

“What?” said Eriko. “Something happen!”

I looked over and there was a cat on her shoulders. It had seen the shoulders, decided that was where it wanted to be, and leaped to its spot. “Kitty on me!” said Eriko. The cat stayed there for a long time. Something about Eriko makes animals want to be on her. At the same time, a little Pomeranian came over and lifted its leg to pee on her. Luckily, it was wearing a diaper.

I also made a friend, a little white dog who sat on my lap and demanded I pet him with both hands. Even when I set him on the ground, he jumped right back!

The dogs (and several of the cats) were getting antsy because it was around 6pm, which meant they knew dinner time was soon. Several of them barked feverishly at the attendant, and when she went behind the staff room door, one dog kept jumping at it, trying to open the door to no avail.

The staff helped us take some pictures, and then when we left, one of them wrote “Bye Bye [kitty face]” on the window in tuna, so that when we were putting on our coats, two kitties came up and licked the tuna on the window to say good-bye!

All in all, Animeal was more than a normal pet cafe. There were so many animals it was impossible to get bored, and the dogs and cats weren’t jaded to the sight of humans like at some pet cafes; they were lively and fun, including jumping on my wife’s shoulders, which is a moment we’ll never forget.

All in all, Animeal is definitely worth the money. We plan to go back to meet the capybara. If you’re in Osaka, look them up! Get a kitty on you!