Last night I went to the theater and we decided to have a late dinner afterward. We settled into a nice looking Turkish restaurant and ordered up some food. Towards the end of our meal I felt something brush against my leg and when I looked down I noticed a black cat under our table. We were all slightly mortified and the waitress only came over when she noticed us trying to shoo him away. She apologized for the cat “that must have wandered out from the back” of the restaurant. The back where?–the kitchen? Urghh. She picked him up and carried him away.
I don’t mind cats, but I do mind them being in places where I pay to eat. Especially in the kitchen. I can just imagine it jumping up all over the counters and around the food. That’s just gross to me. It doesn’t comfort me to think that they brought it in to control a rodent problem either.
Millions of cat owners feed themselves without getting sick. i wouldn’t mind animals in restaurants as long as they’re well behaved and general sanitary practices are observed.
A lot of people (myself included) are allergic to cats. Well, actually, their spittle, which they wipe all over themselves. I won’t have a huge reaction, but I might well get watery eyes and snart coughing if one hangs around me. Their dander goes everywhere.
Now, if they keep him in the bac office, it’s not my problem. But it’s probably not sanitary to have them all over the restaurant or even :“just” in the back, which in most places means the kitchen.
Health code regulations generally prohibit having live animals in food preparation/processing areas at all (except for, say, live lobsters or oysters in a seafood restaurant).
Yes, it’s cute to think of Tabby in the smoke-stained brick-floored kitchen of the rambling old inn, keeping down the mouse population, but in a modern restaurant, it is almost certainly illegal to let the cat be anywhere near where food is being handled.
So don’t eat in restaurants with cats. I imagine if you stay away from Europe you won’t have this problem too often.
FWIW, in London animals are allowed (legally speaking) in restaurants, as long as they’re not allowed in areas where food is prepared. In practice, most restaurants owners don’t allow pets, but most pubs (including those where food is served) do. I take my ferret to the tavern every Sunday, and she’s often joined by other patrons’ critters, including cats, dogs, and other ferrets.
I’m also going to vote for a solution that doesn’t shit in my food.
runner pat, I don’t care if millions of cat owners feed themselves without getting sick. And yes, I’ve eaten in homes that have cats. I’ve just never had to pay a check on my way out.
It isn’t the cat per se that would worry me so much as the possible implications about the restaurant’s attitude to health code regulations in general. If a cat is allowed in the kitchen in blithe disregard of explicit legal regulations forbidding it, what else is going on in that kitchen that the health inspectors might not be happy with?
As a cat owner who doesn’t allow her cats on any food-preparation or eating surfaces, I agree that cats and restaurants don’t mix. For one, they leave hair EVERYWHERE - I never put food on a counter, since it is guaranteed to get cat hair on it if I do, regardless of the cats not being allowed up there, or if I wiped it down immediately before putting food on it. For another, my cats are pretty good about not jumping up, but they’re still cats, and I know they get up there when I’m not looking. I can’t imagine a restaurant trying to serve cat hair-free food with a cat in the kitchen. It’s GOING to get hairy - no question.
I’ve been in lots of pubs with cats (normally owned by the landlord), and in lots of pubs with multiple dogs (either owned by the landlord or brought in by divers patrons).
Actually, yes, she loves beer! She also loves meeting and being held and petted by new people. She’s so popular that she got mentioned as one of the pub’s principal attractions in a Time Out review last month.
There’s a good chance that the family who runs the restaurant live in an apartment on or near the premises. Probably, the cat is normally locked in the apartment, but cats being what they are, managed to escape and went striaght for the place that smells the most like food.
How do you know the cat was in the kitchen? The OP said only that it was in the dining area, and that the owners carried it away. Perhaps it was taken into a back office, or outside, or into an apartment above or next to the restaurant. I’m not going to get worked up about a cat in a restaurant, or make assumptions about the proprietors’ compliance with health code regulations, unless I see solid evidence that (a) the jurisdiction prohibits cats in restaurants, or certain areas thereof, and (b) the cat was actually observed to be in such an area.
