OAKLAND, Calif. — On a sun-drenched Saturday, Eddie Metairie wandered around the Cat Town Cafe & Adoption Center, past the miniature-golf-size buildings, cat perches and a bed shaped like a tuna can as he followed Lucia, an independent-minded brown tabby.

Going to a shelter to find a cat in a cage “is heartbreaking,” said Mr. Metairie, a project manager at a hotel supply company, but the Cat Town Cafe “feels organic.” He was having fun.

By the time his $10-an-hour playtime was up, Mr. Metairie had made plans to take the cat home and rename her Amélie.

The Cat Town Cafe & Adoption Center, which opened in late October and has arranged 52 cat adoptions so far, claims to be the first permanent cat cafe in the United States. Customers line up for locally brewed strong coffee, handmade bagels and “vegan fig nut pop tarts” (the proprietors clearly know their audience). When it is time to visit the cat zone, visitors push through glass doors to another world of lounging cats, all of them candidates for adoption. There are no cages.