Feline Park in Dubai will be the cat’s whiskers

Plans have been presented to Dubai Municipality for a cat park that will eventually be home to 5,000 strays, all of which visitors can play with and adopt, should they wish to.

A plan to launch a cat park in Dubai to house 5,000 furry felines has been submitted to city authorities, although the idea has been met with some scepticism by at least one owner of an animal shelter. Silvia Razgova / The NationalShow less

DUBAI // It may sound like a horror movie to some, but plans are being considered to release as many as 5,000 cats into a public park.

The proposed “Feline Park” will be a place where people can play with house-trained cats while spending time with the family outdoors.

If they like any particular cat, they can pay to adopt the animal and take it home with them.

“Once you have this park, it will mean not as many cats on the street,” said Mahin Bahrami, founder of the Feline Park project.

“At the same time, it would be a place for adoption, education and tourism.”

The proposed park could be situated opposite the new Dubai Pet Market, which will open its doors later this month on the Hatta-Dubai Road.

Plans have been submitted to Dubai Municipality and are awaiting approval.

The park will cost about Dh2 million to build and will have an indoor, air-conditioned area for the animals, as well as other amenities outdoors such as climbing poles.

There is also the possibility for cat cafes, which are proving popular the world over and involve people enjoying the company of affectionate animals for an hour over a coffee. Yoga classes are also a possibility for the park.

In terms of numbers, the park would probably start with about 500 animals and increase to 5,000 over time.

The aim is for it to be 200m by 300m, or 600 square metres, meaning each cat has a territory of about 10m².

The animals would be former street cats that had already been rehabilitated in shelters or in volunteers’ homes, as well as vaccinated and neutered.

Ms Bahrami said the release of animals into the park would be tightly controlled.

“We don’t want to just dump them in there, because they might be sick,” she said. “Our plan is not just to scoop up cats from the street.

“We want to have the best, home-able cats in the park. The ones that are friendliest and most used to humans.”

She acknowledged that there were challenges related to caring for so many cats but she said there were plans to deal with that.

“We won’t have 1,000 plastic bowls for the cats to eat,” she said. “It’s going to be industrial.

“We’ll have a long trough along the wall where the cats will be fed. We want to make a spectacle out of the feeding, so we can add tourism value.”

But one owner of an animal shelter, who declined to be named, said it was a problematic idea.

“If these cats were wild originally, even if they have been rehabilitated and house-trained for years, if you release them into a park, they’ll go back to being wild,” she said.

The shelter source said it would also be difficult to ensure so many cats were regularly washed, as well as properly fed. The cost of the food itself for so many animals would be prohibitive, she said.

“I don’t think it’s realistic,” she added. “It would likely turn into a place where people just dumped their animals. It could be a disaster.”

The park draws upon the growing popularity of cat cafes, a craze that started in Tokyo a little over 10 years ago and has since spread around the world.

A Royalty Dubai Cat Cafe is thought to already exist in Jumeirah, although the site could not be located this week and the owners could not be reached for comment.

Ms Bahrami said she hoped the park would become known internationally and develop into a tourist spot.

There are plans to maximise its uniqueness by making it completely green and self-sustainable. There would be solar panels for electricity and a unit to make drinking water by condensing the humidity from the air.

A sewage-treatment plant would also be on-site.

“The main thing though is to have lots of trees,” she said. “I want to create a natural environment for cats to live in.”