Tokyo's Cat Cafes

In Japan, cat cafes have become very popular since 2015 when the first cat café was opened in Osaka. There you can sit with friends, drink coffee or tea and at the same time you will be surrounded by 20-30 cats.

For a modest fee of between $5 and $8 Japanese animal lovers can enjoy their usual coffee surrounded by dozens of playful cats. Spending an hour in the company of cats can work wonders on the human mind, and when you’re as stressed as Japanese business-men, even more so. Many of them can’t fit a household pet into their busy schedules, so they opt for a relaxing one-hour break in the company of purring felines.

There are rules to follow in such cafes: first, you need to remove your shoes and put on slippers. Then, when you enter the cafe, one of the employee will sprays your hands with disinfectant. It is forbidden to take photos with flash, to grab tails and to wake sleeping kittens.

It helps a lot to bring some treats with you to lure cats come around you, but when the treat is gone, they will be too.

Chicken Hotel

It's a hotel - but with a major difference. Instead of booking in guests in human form, Cornwall's newest hotel only takes chickens. The aptly-named Chicken Hotel recently opened for business at Boskenwyn, Helston. The venture was set up to give chicken owners a place to check-in their birds while away from home.

David Roberts, a maths teacher who keeps his own chickens as a hobby, runs the hotel. He said: With more people looking to escape the rat race and move out in the country with a little bit of land, keeping chickens is becoming more and more popular.