VOA慢速英语2015 猫主题咖啡馆提供猫和咖啡

AS IT IS 2015-04-27 Cat Cafes Offer Cats and Coffee 猫主题咖啡馆提供猫和咖啡

Would you like a cat with that latte?

Most people go to a café to get their daily cup of coffee. At Cat Town Café in Oakland, California, they can also observe and play with cats.  Cat Town Café is the first cat café in the U.S. It is a combination¹ of a coffee shop and an adoption² center for cats.

The first cat café opened in Asia in the 1990s. They are now found across Asia and Europe. Cat Town Café in California open its doors last year, becoming the first permanent one in the United States.

The cat zone

The cat area has colorful, eye-catching paintings on the walls, comfortable chairs and sofas, and huge painted wooden play structures. About 20 cats sleep in the sun or relax in front of big windows that overlook³ a busy street. For a small entrance fee, customers spend an hour with the cats -- playing, touching⁴ or just watching them.

Customers have many reasons for visiting Oakland's Cat Town Café. Alan brought his son Caleb. He says his son enjoys cats.

"My son enjoys cats so thought it would be a fun place for him to stop and say 'hello.' Where we live, we cannot have cats. We have not had any pets for him. So this is a nice opportunity for him to come see animals."

Mike Deluca was looking to adopt a cat for his girlfriend's son, Michael. On their second visit to Cat Town Café, they found Juniper, a young gray cat with marks like a tiger.

"We just fell in love with the cats they had there. They had a great assortment⁵ of cats, kittens, adult kittens. And the staff was amazing. And we decided⁶ to get a cat for her son. And it's been going great ever since."

Adopting, not just admiring

All the cats at Cat Town Café can be adopted. The café gets them from local shelters. Workers at Cat Town Café hope each cat will find a family.

Adam Myatt co-founded Cat Town with Ann Dunn. He says they saw cat cafés as an opportunity to bring attention to the situation of stray⁷ cats – in other words, cats without homes.

Ann Dunn started a rescue center four years ago, and since then has cared for and adopted out hundreds of homeless cats.

"Could we just do this like as an adoption center? Could we just tack⁸ this coffee thing on top of it and bring more people in to meet these cats?"

Millions of dogs and cats are put to sleep each year in U.S. animal shelters. In Oakland, the cat euthanasia rate was 40 percent four years ago. Thanks to Cat Town and other rescue centers, as well as campaigns to stop animals from reproducing⁹, the number of cats killed at Oakland shelters has now dropped to 20 percent.

Ann Dunn says the hundreds of volunteers who help out at the café and provide foster¹⁰ homes have made a big difference.

"The measure of our success is how many cats are being adopted, and we've more than doubled our adoption rate as an organization since we opened this. So it's succeeding and it's an exciting thing for the city of Oakland to have the nation's first cat café. We're drawing people who are coming, not just from getting in their cars and coming here, to Oakland, but people who are getting on planes and coming here."

Cat cafés are quickly spreading to other cities nationwide. Since Cat Town opened, cat cafés have started in New York, Colorado and Oregon.

Words in This Story

café – n. a small restaurant where you can get simple meals and drinks, such as coffee

adopt – v. to take a pet legally as your own

assortment – n. a group or collection of different things

tack – v. to add on or attach something

euthanasia – n. the act or practice of killing¹¹ someone or something that is very sick or injured in order to prevent any more suffering

foster – adj. a situation in which for a period of time an animal lives with and is cared for by people who are not the owners

1 combination   

n.组合，合并，联合；

参考例句：

• He carried on the business in combination with his friends.他与朋友们合伙做生意。
• The materials can be used singly or in combination.这些材料可以单独使用也可以混合用。

2 adoption   

n.采用，采纳，通过；收养

参考例句：

• An adoption agency had sent the boys to two different families.一个收养机构把他们送给两个不同的家庭。
• The adoption of this policy would relieve them of a tremendous burden.采取这一政策会给他们解除一个巨大的负担。

3 overlook   

v.忽视，忽略，俯瞰，眺望，宽容，宽恕

参考例句：

• How could you overlook paying the rent?你怎么会忘了付房租？
• It was a slight overlook on my part.这是我的一个小疏忽。

4 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

5 assortment   

n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集

参考例句：

• This shop has a good assortment of goods to choose from.该店各色货物俱全，任君选择。
• She was wearing an odd assortment of clothes.她穿着奇装异服。

6 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

7 stray   

n.走失的家畜，浪子；adj.迷途的，偶然的；vi.迷路，彷徨

参考例句：

• We couldn't identify the stray child.我们不能辨认出这个迷途孩子的身份。
• Please don't stray from the subject.请不要离开本题。

8 tack   

n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝

参考例句：

• He is hammering a tack into the wall to hang a picture.他正往墙上钉一枚平头钉用来挂画。
• We are going to tack the map on the wall.我们打算把这张地图钉在墙上。

9 reproducing   

复制( reproduce的现在分词 )； 重现； 再版； 生殖

参考例句：

• Mind has become self-reproducing through man's capacity to transmit experience and its products cumulatively. 通过传递生活经验和积累创造的产品，人类的智慧在不断地进行着自我丰富。
• Spores form a lipid membrane during the process of reproducing. 孢于在生殖过程中形成类脂膜。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 预防生物武器

10 foster   

vt.收养，培养，促进；adj.收养的，收养孩子的

参考例句：

• Nowadays young couple sometimes foster.现今年轻夫妇有时领养别人的孩子。
• The captain did his best to foster a sense of unity among the new recruits.队长尽力培养新成员之间的团结精神。

11 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。