Anderson Cooper Laughs Until He Cries After John Mayer Calls in From a Cat Cafe on New Year’s

New Year’s Eve broadcasts are usually their best when things start to go wrong, and lucky for us, CNN‘s New Year’s Eve Times Square with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen got delightfully unhinged when John Mayer randomly turned up to say hi from a cat cafe in Tokyo.

There were only about 45 minutes left until midnight when the singer-songwriter joined the two hosts, immediately bewildering them as the camera caught a bunch of tabbies prancing all over the bar. Cooper started cracking up as Mayer introduced a few of feline friends from the establishment — called Cats in the Box and located in Tokyo’s Shinjuku center — with a totally straight face.

Cohen tried to keep the conversation going. But as more cats surrounded Mayer, nuzzling and licking each other, the more Cooper couldn’t hold it together. “I don’t know how much more clear I can be about the objective of this place,” Mayer dead-panned. That made Cooper really lose it, and he had to briefly step off-camera to gather himself.

“I can’t see Anderson, but I know exactly what he looks like,” Mayer continued seriously as Cooper’s howls of laugher echoed out of frame. “He’s gone, he’s off with the fairies here. Just the shot of the cat’s ass in your face is making him delirious,” Cohen responded.

Mayer then proceeded to feed one of the cats with some kind of wet food. “I thought these were solid treats. This seems to be a paste of some kind that you feed the cats directly from a tube. It turns out this is a gelatinous cat paste,” Mayer said.

Mayer was in Tokyo following a performance at the Blue Note there the night before. Toward the end of his interview, he hinted at a possible Dead and Company reunion following the band’s final tour this summer. “Have hope, is what I’ll say,” Mayer teased. He plans to keep traveling for his solo tour in 2024, having announced a bunch of European dates back in April. Maybe he’ll find more cat cafes.