In contemporary urban Japan, men and women, mostly in their twenties and thirties, visit neko kafe (cat cafés) and pay to spend a set amount of time in the company of cats. Extra money is necessary for any food or drink, for the patrons and cats, and while the cats are not for sale, some are adoptable. Patrons are briefed on the rules (for example, lifting up any cat is forbidden) before joining the cats in a carefully created living-room-sized space to relax on cosy couches amid homely décor. Cats themselves are fuwa fuwa, soft and fluffy to the touch, and provide a comforting presence. The experience as a whole is designed to ease tensions and boost positive emotions in patrons — an effect known as iyashi (healing).Many neko kafe patrons are of the troubled decade of the 1990s, when Japan endured a lengthy recession and suffered from adverse events including the Kobe earthquake and Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attack, both in 1995.Around this time the term iyashi gained prominence in mainstream media.1 Iyashi is a label for that which soothes, relaxes or is therapeutic both physically and psychologically. The term was initially coined in 1990 by Noriyuki Ueda, a Japanese anthropologist, during his time studying a Sri Lankan village. Ueda noted that any villager experiencing a period of isolation or loneliness was believed to be vulnerable to possession by an evil spirit, an event manifested through illness. In response, if a villager became ill, the rest of the village would conduct an exorcism ritual to remove the evil spirit and restore the villager to the community. It was this restoring effect of the ritual that Ueda termed iyashi.2Neko kafe arrived in Japan from Taiwan in 2004 to join iyashi-themed music, bath salts, robots and many other products.3 The demand for iyashi has also seen the rise of a subgenre in Japanese animated film (anime), video games, and comic books (manga) referred to as iyashikei (the suffix ‘kei’ means ‘type’). These works are intended to have a soothing effect on the audience, for instance through cinematography featuring idyllic nature or scenes from childhood.Although the practice of neko kafe itself peaked in 2009, the combination of healing and socialisation (between patrons and cats, or between patrons themselves) continues to be popular with Japan’s 20–30 year olds4. They are Japan’s so-called ‘lost generation’, often working in low-paying, insecure jobs and struggling to maintain meaningful social connections.5