The Power of Pawsitivity: Gaza’s Meow Cat Café Offers a Refuge for War-Weary Residents

Cats are a natural antidepressant for Gazans forced to endure a 17-year siege. The café aims not just for profit but for psychological healing in a troubled region.

[Gaza City] Since its opening over a week ago, Gaza’s Meow Cat Café has been attracting queues of cat lovers who come to hang out with the 14 resident kittens while enjoying a drink and ice cream.

Parents can watch their kids playing with the furry felines, most Persian, in a cat-themed environment filled with lively colors, shelves, mirrors, and cat-appropriate decorations.

Meow Cat Café in Central Gaza, Aug. 22, 2023. (Hazem Albaz)

Café founder Naema Mabed, 52, has consistently raised and loved cats since she was a little girl; she considers them a source of positivity and joy. The Meow Cat Café, she told The Media Line, seeks to return a profit while helping people improve their state of mind.

For more than 23 years, Mabed explained, “I’ve been working in the humanitarian field as a project manager for international organizations in Gaza. I participated in many psychological support programs and saw people filled with sadness, despair, and gloom, especially after every war.”

When she retired, Mabed resolved to use her management experience to start a project allowing residents to “interact with cats, which bring relief and spread happiness and positivity.”

She said this kind of psychological relief is crucial, given the “difficult conditions we live in in the Strip due to the strict, 17-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade.”

Seven workers, most members of the Mabed family, work in Meow Cat Café, including experts responsible for the cats’ medical care. According to Obada Reziq, one of the café’s employees, the project’s success has been far more significant than expected.

Meow Cat Café in Central Gaza, Aug. 22, 2023. (Hazem Albaz)

Reziq said that the queues for people waiting to enter the café have often been long. He said there had been “negative comments on social media platforms” before the café started, “but now we’re more than pleased with the results and remarkable interactions of people with the idea.”

For a fee of five shekels, or nearly $1.5 per half hour, customers can enter the cat corner, separated from the drinks area by a glass partition, to enjoy the kittens.

Two sisters, cat lovers Maryam and Raghad, are regular customers. They told The Media Line that their mother doesn’t allow them to have cats in their small apartment, so they “come every day to play with Tom [the Persian cat]. He’s so cute and active with little kids. We’re deeply in love with this place.”

Gaza’s children are the most affected by the Strip’s devastating conditions. They live a harsh childhood of wars, trauma, and death.

Mohammed Alqrenawi, who brought his young daughter to play with the kittens, told The Media Line, “Gaza’s children are the most affected by the Strip’s devastating conditions. They live a harsh childhood of wars, trauma, and death.” Young people in Gaza “need this type of project” to experience moments of “peace and happiness.”

Meow Cat Café in Central Gaza, Aug. 22, 2023. (Hazem Albaz)

Mabed, who hopes to expand her business, believes her project will raise awareness in Gaza about pet care. She will not offer the café’s cats for adoption but is eager to help customers adopt cats from local animal care facilities.