What could make miniature towns and trains even more endearing? Obviously cats, the internet’s answer to everything. You know, just let them loose to do what they want inside a tiny town that they tower over. I really enjoy this idea in concept and, it turns out, practice, as that’s the concept behind a cute TikTok account that’s blowing up this week.
Dioramarestaurant is the TikTok account for the cafe of the same name, essentially a hobby-store display meets cat refuge. While it was originally just a cafe with model trains, some stray cats moved in during the pandemic, and ended up sticking around. Over the course of lockdown, the felines helped the restaurant gain some business-saving popularity points on social media and media notoriety that it might otherwise not have enjoyed. So the cats are now permanent installations, with the cafe doubling as a shelter for the furry things.
Thanks to the cafe’s official TikTok, there’s no need to actually be in Osaka, Japan to appreciate the feline shenanigans. As you might expect, the cats seem to oscillate between laying around and exerting bouts of sudden violence against the moving rail cars:
Others are just content to sit in the way of everything
And some cats cause absolute mayhem:
I can’t deny how cute this is, but I also can’t help but wonder how fun this would be as a mode or feature of an actual train game or village sim. We’ve had playful “animals up to no good” games such as Untitled Goose Game or a handful of moments in Stray, but it would be neat to just have cats and their spontaneous behavior become an unpredictable element in a simulation. You know, kinda like Alien: Isolation, but cuter, and in Sim City or something.
