BANGKOK – Cat cafes where customers sip lattes while petting resident kitties are just opening their doors around the U.S. and Europe. But in Asia, where the first one opened more than a decade ago, the concept has moved well beyond felines.

At Tokyo’s Snake Center, visitors pay about $11 for a cup of coffee and a slithery friend to wind around their arm; a plate of curry bread snacks or a really big snake costs extra.

At We Are The Furballs in Singapore, Mochi and her puppy pals yap at ankles and occupy guests’ laps for peaceful dognaps.

And at Little Zoo Cafe in Bangkok, meerkats, raccoons and little foxes with the softest ears imaginable can be cuddled near plates of crepes and french fries.

Some sell the animals, or offer them for adoption. Others invite customers to bring their pets, or just offer encounters with creatures – from penguins to hedgehogs.

“I wanted there to be a place where people can come learn about the animals,” said Wachiraporn Arampibulphol, who opened an exotic animal cafe in Bangkok a year ago.

After a cat cafe opened in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014, the concept quickly spread to more than 20 American cities, from New York to Los Angeles, and many more are planned. They’re also popular in Europe, with recent openings in Netherlands, Finland and Italy.

The Cat Flower Cafe in Taipei, Taiwan, took credit as the first-ever cat cafe when it opened in 1998, although some aficionados say cats meandered through a Viennese cafe almost a century earlier. The real boom began in 2005 in Japan, where few apartments allow pets. There are now more than 100 cat cafes listed in Japan, 50 in Tokyo alone. But new goat-, rabbit- and bird-themed eateries now offer competition.

American and European cat cafes have stringent health and safety regulations that sometimes ban petting animals, or require cats to remain well separated from food. Most are affiliated with local humane societies or rescue shelters.

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In this Sept. 30, 2016 photo, Nina Arakawa pets a snake at Tokyo’s Snake Center, in Tokyo. Cat cafes where customers sip lattes while petting resident kitties are just opening their doors around the U.S. and Europe. But in Asia, where the first one opened more than a decade ago, the concept has moved well beyond felines. At Tokyo’s Snake Center, visitors pay 1,100 yen (about $11) for a cup of coffee and a slithery friend to wind around their arm; a plate of curry bread snacks or a really big snake costs extra. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Eugene Hoshiko