My granddaughter Stasia is going to turn nine tomorrow, but because it was rainy and raw and we all had the day free while she was on vacation, we gave her an early present: an exploration of the "big city" of New Haven that included a trip to the Yale Art Gallery, the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a local Subway for lunch, and a stop at a very, very special place—the "Mew Haven Cat Cafe." I'm told that cat cafes originated in Japan, and then came to this country via the West Coast and, no surprise, Brooklyn, and while for us it seems kind of redundant to pay a modest entry fee to drink coffee surrounded by felines—we can be surrounded by kitties at home any time we desire—the place is great fun, and Stasia, a bona fide cat fancier, had a ball with her new found friends... well, the ones who weren't sleeping.