Welcome to OnMeowaukee Cat Week, a meowsome bunch of articles, photos, videos and an Instagram contest celebrating all aspects of Milwaukee cats. Sponsored by Bark N' Scratch Outpost, these seven days are dedicated to those creatures with nine lives who make our lives more paw-sitive.

Seems cat cafes are cropping up all over the U.S. these days, and it only makes sense that one will eventually make its way to Milwaukee.

Part cafe and part adoption center, cat cafes are hip coffee shops where guests can grab their daily caffeine fix while keeping company with resident felines.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when the cat cafe craze began. However, the cafes have been gaining in popularity in Japan, where over 79 cafes have opened since the mid-2000s.

The Japanese cafes are in fact so popular, the concept has begun to morph; and now cat lovers in Tokyo can spend time at hotspots like Neko (Japanese for "cat"), a cat nightclub that opened in Tokyo this summer.

Cat cafes have also popped up internationally in cities like London, Paris and Vienna, with the first North American cafe opening in Montreal in August 2014.

Strict food service industry regulations – dictating that the area where the cats are must be completely separated from the area where food and drink are served – have made it difficult for the concept to take off in the U.S.; however, in 2014, the first U.S. cat cafe opened in Oakland, Calif.  And other cities are following suit. Cafes now exist in New York, Denver, Naples, Fla. and Portland, Ore. And, just this summer, at least two more cat cafes opened -- Crumbs and Whiskers in Washington, D.C., and KitTea in San Francisco. A Minneapolis based cafe, The Cafe Meow, hopes to open in 2016.

Although each cafe is different, generally the concept is two-fold:  to provide a space for the public to interact with their feline friends and to offer up a mechanism to facilitate cat adoption.

Most cat cafes are partnerships between a cafe owner, who manages food or beverage service, and an area cat shelter, which provides adoption services for at least some of the felines living in the cafe. And reports from spots like Crumbs and Whiskers seem to indicate that adoption programs facilitated by cafes can be quite successful.

But, despite the frenzy over the cafes among cat lovers, the concept does have its naysayers. In Great Britain, a cat cafe is getting flak from local feline charity, Cats Protection, for potentially causing stress for the cafe cats. The organization is quoted by BBC news as saying that "people who care about the wellbeing of cats would not want them to be exploited as a gimmick to sell coffee and would therefore not wish to encourage the launch of these establishments."

Dr. John Bradshaw, a veterinarian in the UK, has also expressed dissent – and the need for more research into the concept of cafes – in an article for the Veterinary Record in which he argues that cat cafes can cause undue stress for some felines and may lead to behavioral disorders.

What do you think?  Does Milwaukee need a cat cafe?  Would you patronize one that opened in the area?