La Gatoteca Cat Cafe Madrid

Location and Concept

La Gatoteca is located right in the centre of Madrid, directly next to the museum of modern art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. What’s special about this cat cafe is the concept of making the cats available for adoption. You can check if there is a certain bond between you and the cat and if you want to give them a new home you become a partner of the association and attend a basic course of keeping cats. Everyone who is interested in adoption needs to come in person before the adoption is granted, the total cost is 78€ and you only need to pay it once no matter how many cats you adopt.  The concept works fine, take a look at the following cats who found a forever home:

The cats are stray cats or unwanted cats, not all of them are easy to handle – like my girlfriend had to experience when a claw hit her ;). You never know what kind of life they had and how well they are socialized but that’s what the cat cafe is for: You can spend time with them and see if one of them is a match for you. Entrance fee is based on the time you spent in La Gatoteca, one drink is included in the entrance fee, if you wanna drink more you need to buy further drinks.

Photo Equipment

After my first visit in a cat cafe in Tokyo I thought that the focal length of the M.Zuiko 45 F1.8 is a little long, this time I used the Olympus PEN E-P5 with the PanaLeica 25mm F1.4 exclusively. The first reason for that is that it’s good for portraits and I don’t need large spaces to get distance to the subjects and the second reason is the large aperture of 1.4 so it gathers lots of light, important in a rather dark place like the cat cafe. It’s currently my favorite and most used lens and I will surely write an article about it in the near future. So this was the combination I used, only one body with one lens so I was able to fully concentrate on the cats ;).

Photos

Now let’s see some impressions of the cats in La Gatoteca. I can highly recommend a visit in this cat cafe, the cats are treated very well and the concept to “try before you buy” in a nice environment is good and should be supported. Visit La Gatoteca if you are in Madrid!