Cats & Cappuccinos: Cat Cafe Set to Open in East London

January 5, 2013 | By Sara | Reply

If like us, you enjoy nothing more than a good cuddle with your coffee, you will be squealing with excitement at the prospect of the UK’s very first cat cafe.
Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium is a crowd-funded small business idea launched by Lauren Pears, which if successful, will give Londoners a place to not only enjoy a cuppa and cake but also get their daily fix of feline fluffiness too.
Cat Cafe? What the holy fuzz are you talking about, you say?! Cat cafe’s give homeless cats a home and petless people a place to enjoy a snuggle with the resident felines. The first cat cafe opened in Taiwan in 1998 and since then there has been an explosion in other cities like Tokyo, where there are currently believed to be up to 40 cat cafes, along with Austria and Russia where cat cafes have pounced up more recently.

So what has been behind this feline phenomena? Longer working hours, congested living conditions and restrictions on owning pets in rented property have made cat cafes highly popular in other major cities. Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium Founder Lauren Pears believes this makes London the purrrfect place for the UK’s first foray into feline cafes.
“We envisage this being a really luxurious place. You coming in out of the rain, take off your coat, sit down in a nice comfortable chair and spend some time playing with one of our kitties,” says Lauren, setting the scene of the proposed East London cafe.
As well as being a trendy little place for people to get some pussy lovin, Cat cafes also give new hope to homeless kitties. “Cat welfare is really important to us so we are working with the Mayhew Animal Home to choose cats that will be happy in an environment with lots of people. It’s really important to us that our cats are happy,” says Lauren.
Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium needs £108,000 to open it’s doors and has got off to a flying start raising nearly £7,500 in just a few days. There are 42 days left to donate, so to help this amazing idea get off the ground, go to www.indiegogo.com to donate now.