There were only a few hiccups in the opening of Koneko, the new cat cafe on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side.  The dishwasher sprang a leak on Oct. 29 (National Cat Day, as it happens), and flooded the place. The following day, a customer was unable to unlock the bathroom door (identified by an elegant pictogram of a litter box), though she was extremely gracious about her misfortune.  Cat cafes run on an engine of good will, as Benjamin Kalb, 25, Koneko’s founder, is discovering.  Wildly popular in Japan, where many landlords don’t allow pets, cat cafes combine feline communion with modest food service. It’s complicated to pull off in New York, because health department rules are such that food preparation and animals may not mix.  The Clinton Street space, once home to the Bang Bang tattoo parlor (which has moved to Broome Street), has been artfully conceived by CO-Office, a design firm, to separate the food making from the felines. (Meow Parlour, technically the city’s first cat cafe when it opened last December on Hester Street, is a cats-only location; sweet snacks are brought over from the Meow Parlour Patisserie around the corner.)  “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” said Jackie Luther, 53, once a bartender at CBGB, who has been working at a veterinary practice for the past decade. That background makes her, Mr. Kalb opined, the platonic ideal of a cattery guide. She is one of three guides who care for the cats (14 were in residence last week) and oversee the guests who have reserved time with them.  Cattery visits are $15 an hour and reservations are suggested, though some walk-ins may be accommodated. All the cats at Koneko are adoptable. Mr. Kalb has partnered with Anjellicle Cats Rescue, a New York organization that saves cats from the “at risk” list of the city’s Animal Care Center.  Ms. Luther wore a black T-shirt and had an ankh tattoo; Alison Nishiyama, 27, a graphic designer who has been working at a vet practice and volunteering at the A.S.P.C.A., wore cat-shaped earrings and a cat-shaped pendant necklace. The third guide, Anne Paolini, 24, is a yoga instructor with a degree in foreign policy who plans to hold vinyasa classes at Koneko, and cat meditation. What does that mean?  “No one knows,” said Joe Crump, 55, Koneko’s creative director and Mr. Kalb’s partner.  Ms. Paolini explained later that the cat meditation she had envisioned involved humans meditating among the cats, not the other way around.  Koneko is sleekly appointed and elegantly minimal (Donald Judd meets Cirque du Soleil is how Mr. Kalb described it) with poured concrete floors, gallery lighting and carefully curated art work, including stunning black-and-white cat photos by Ylla, once the Richard Avedon of the animal world, who died in 1955.  The cat areas — two living rooms and an outdoor space (otherwise known as the catio, with an anime-ish mural by Tim Diet, a street artist) — are separated from the restaurant by a glass wall and an anteroom for removing shoes and coats. Floating red oak shelves step the walls of the upstairs cattery; downstairs is black canvas modular furniture and black-and-white tiles. There are felt cat beds, circular mats by Flor and minifutons, in an aesthetic more sophisticated than the carpet trees that tend to mark the pinnacle of cat design.  “We tried to curate above that which you’d find on Petco,” said Mr. Crump, who is also an executive at Razorfish, the digital ad agency. “Many of the things were found on Etsy and tested on our own cats, like the felt cat beds made by a woman on Nantucket. They take three weeks. We ordered six. It totally stressed her out.”  There are Japanese bar snacks, like house-made jerky and seasonal pickles, as well as jicama salad, Stumptown coffee, sake, wine and beer and desserts like green tea cheesecake from Patisserie Tomoko in Brooklyn.  Mr. Kalb, a classical pianist who had been a line cook in restaurants like Bouley and Momofuku Noodle Bar, had an existential moment on his last birthday. With a degree in music and English from the New School, he wondered, “What am I doing with my life?” While visiting Japan, he found himself at Calico, a multilevel cat cafe.  “It was the most transformative, amazing experience,” he said. Back home, he thought: “You only live once. Why not go big?”  He toured 25 Japanese cafes in four cities before conceiving Koneko with a mandate, he said, to elevate the concept with polished design and curated art. The other day, Mr. Kalb was observing three women in their mid-20s who worked in finance take photos of Lauren, an extravagantly affectionate tabby, who was lolling on her back. “I feel like we’re in meta voyeur mode,” he said.  Lauren licked the Purell off a visitor’s thumb, and Ms. Luther noted that she once had a cat that ate Bengay.  What’s the difference between the clientele of CBGB and Konoko? “Not as edgy and definitely more sober,” Ms. Luther said.  Ms. Paolini may disagree. She said happy hour in the area has brought a few mildly lubricated crowds. On Thursday, she said, a group came in who were a bit loud, though the cats took them in stride. Later one guest posted on Instagram: “#tbt to yesterday afternoon when I got drunk at a cat cafe and started taking artsy photos.” (Cats are to Instagram what the Jenner family is to People magazine.)  Mostly the guests are as blissed out as the cats.  “It’s communion,” said a 32-year-old woman who works in real estate and declined to give her name. She was admiring the antics of Bueller, a 9-month-old marmalade who was careering after a ball in the cattery downstairs. “I have a cat,” the woman said, “so I feel a little dirty coming here. It’s like going to a strip club if you’re married.”  George, a somnolent ginger fellow curled in an orange felt bed, was sleeping through the overtures of Molly Flanagan, 31, who works at the United Nations and had brought her sister, Rebecca, 29, who works at Unicef.  “We met first on the Internet,” said Ms. Flanagan of George, explaining that she found his profile on Petfinder, the Match.com of domestic animals. “I was looking for a redhead,” added Ms. Flanagan, who wore her own coppery hair in a short crop, “so we could — —”  Her sister broke in, “Share clothes?”  Social media had also drawn in Brianna Kennedy, 25, who handles social media for an online fashion company.  “I follow a lot of cat Instagrams,” she said. “I would really love to adopt. Bryant was Insta’d on #catroomnyc, and it said he was coming here,” she added, referring to a soulful gray lolling on a futon in a corner.  Ms. Kennedy was not Bryant’s only suitor. Susan Easton, a graphic designer and entrepreneur who created Koneko’s branding, including its emoticonlike logo, had also fallen hard for Bryant.  It felt like kismet, she said, because the typeface she’d chosen for the cafe was a sans serif draftsman’s font that was also named Bryant.  “I’m trying to convince Ben and Joe to make Bryant the house cat so I can come visit,” she said, adding that she travels too much to have an animal. Also, her boyfriend is allergic.
Koneko, a new cat cafe in Lower Manhattan, lets you order Japanese snacks and sake, along with feline companionship.