A cat cafe

News.com.au reports:

WOULD you like some kitten with your coffee?

Feline company is exactly what one of London’s newest cafes is offering — and stressed-out city-dwellers are lapping it up.

“People do want to have pets and in tiny flats, you can’t,” said cafe owner Lauren Pears, who opened Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium last month in an area east of the city’s financial district.

“There’s not many places in London you can just curl up with a book and chill out with a cat or two on your lap,” she said on Friday. “I think that’s what our success is down to.” …

The cozy English tea room, named after Alice’s cat in Alice in Wonderland, charges customers 5 pounds ($9) for two hours of kitty company. Coffee and afternoon tea — sandwiches, cakes and scones — are on the menu at an additional cost.

Lady Dinah’s opened on March 1, and is fully booked until the end of June.

Ms Pears raised more than 109,000 pounds through a crowd-funding campaign to get the cafe up and running. Despite more than a year of planning permission delays and figuring out how to maintain health and safety standards, she says the hard work has been worth it.

The 11 resident kitties were donated by people leaving the country who could no longer look after them. Kitty welfare is paramount: the cats get regular breaks away from people, and staff have been trained by animal behaviourists to care for them.

That’s a great idea. No surprise they are booked up for three months. I love in an apartment block that bans pets, and miss not having a cat. I’d definitely go to a cafe with cats.