Japanese clothing and housewares company Nissen recently launched its most intriguing product yet – a line of bed linens and blankets that try to mimic cat fur.
Studies have shown that petting a cat for just 10 minutes reduces the levels of stress hormones, and any cat lover will tell you just how relaxing the experience can be. But what about people who would love to have a pet cat, but are living in rented apartments that don’t allow pets? Or how about people who are allergic to cats, what are they supposed to do to relax? Well, that’s where the new Neko Feel (“Cat Feel”) material developed by Nissen comes into play. The Japanese company just launched a line of bed Neko Feel linens that it claims mimics the feel of cat fur.
Photo: Nissen
It all started about a year ago, when a young Nissen employee started complaining that the apartment she was living in had a no-pets policy, which made it impossible to get a cat. Apparently, someone at the company realized that it was a common problem and decided to do something about it. And that’s how the quest to create an artificial alternative to cat fur began.
According to SoraNews24, after coming up with some samples, Nissen started consulting its cat-owning employees about various features of the material, like softness, thickness and the length of the fibers. Apparently, even the coloring was inspired by cat breeds like Russian Blue and Scottish Fold, which are known to have deeper shades at the base of the hairs and transition towards white at the tips.
Photo: Nissen
Nissin’s Neko Feel offerings include a mattress pad that comes in single, semi-double, and double sizes, a blanket that comes in either single or double size, a smaller throw blanket, and a ‘circle relaxation cushion’ that goes on the floor.
Prices range from 1,969 yen ($13) to 6,038 yen ($41) for the double bed-size blanket. That’s not bad for something that supposedly mimics cat fur, but the bad news is that getting your hands on some Nekko Feel products may be quite the challenge since they’ve sold out within hours of Nissen announcing them through their official Twitter account.
Photo: Nissen
