SINGAPORE -- When you walk into the Cat Museum at Purvis Street, expect to be greeted by a welcome committee of six furballs.
The handsome maine coon at the entrance, aptly christened Channing Tatum, is joined by a trio of delicate white khao manee cats, which have a Thai heritage dating back hundreds of years.
Channing Tatum isn't the only one with a famous name; many have been named after celebrities, like Prince Harry and Brad Pitt. "Usually it's after celebs or pop culture icons. Why not? It's fun," its owner, Jessica Seet said.
Upstairs, about 30 cats are waiting to be adopted. There are 13 cats on the top floor that belong to Seet.
That's why "museum" is a bit of a misnomer; while it offers a spot for the public to frolic with kitties, this is also Seet's way of increasing adoption efforts.
"Adoption drives can be really stressful for cats, because they're displayed in cages and they're all rattled and unhappy. The adoption floor is the average size of an apartment in Singapore, and people can better imagine how their homes would be like with a cat living in it," Seet told Mashable.
Seet, who has run a voice and speech training center on the premises for over a decade, started noticing cats getting displaced in the stretch of conservation shophouses along the street, as restaurants moved in and Purvis Street became busier.
After picking up a bunch of cats off the street -- many of whom live on the top floor of the museum still -- she decided to formally open the place as a bit of a halfway house for other kitties that people pick up.
Many send their cats to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which doesn't have the capacity for so many felines, Seet added. "So people who think they're doing a good deed ring up several days after sending the cats there, only to be heartbroken when they find out the cats have been put down."
Seet started out as more of a dog person, she insists. But 11 years ago, after falling in love with her first cat, a chubby British Shorthair and Persian mix she named Brad Pitt, it was all downhill from there.
"It was too good not to share -- that feeling of having a cat purring, sleeping on your lap," she said.
Visitors to the cat museum should know that Seet's enthusiasm is contagious. Dog lovers might just walk away with a change of heart.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/catmuseum19.jpg" caption="The "kitten kindergarten" on the adoption floor with 18 kittens in it." credit="Victoria Ho/Mashable" alt="catmuseum19"]
