I really want a cat. But, reality check, I live in a studio apartment on the sixth floor. Oh, and responsibility and commitment are not really my thing. I mean,  I could be married with three kids by now but I can’t even be bothered to swipe on Tinder. Also, I’m “always on holiday” and I’ve never had a pet that doesn’t live in a cage before and I’m not sure how I feel about cleaning up sick and poop (human or animal). None of this is conducive to feline ownership even before I mention that my mother is most definitely definitely not a cat lady. So, yes, probably shouldn’t do anything until I’ve worked through all of the above but my mother and I visited The London Cat Village as a first step in “Lily gets a cat” and it was super sweet.

We visited on a Friday and it was quiet but booking is advisable (here). We swapped our shoes for slippers (provided but bring your own socks), helped ourselves to hand sanitiser and had the rules explained to us – no picking the cats up or feeding them human food – and were shown to our table.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch the name of the girl working the day we visited but she was so lovely (dark hair, Scottish) and introduced all the cats to us, explaining their personalities, breeds and answering our questions. My mother isn’t a natural cat lady and hasn’t spent much time around cats but all of the ones at the Cat Village are very chilled and used to humans. Being cats they are pretty un-fussed by humans and one was far more interested in the contents of my handbag than us.

At midday the cats are quite active – they have a lot of scratching posts, toys and different levels to explore but obviously prefer trying to fit into too-small boxes. The Cat Village has a basement area too so the 13 cats have plenty of space to roam, sleep and get away from humans if they want to. It’s really clean and well maintained, the cats are all chilled out and happy and love to sit in the window watching passers by and getting attention from the ones who notice cats starting out of a Shoreditch window!

The Cat Village serves food and drinks – pretty normally priced by London standards. We each had a soya golden latte (tumeric, ginger, cinnamon and honey) which came in super cute cats paw mugs. We didn’t order food but the next table’s order looked great and reminded me that I was starving but I wanted to use my hour to play with the cats as much as possible. Our favourite cat was Oscar, a Scottish fold with a round face and huge eyes. He has his own Instagram page and I think is the only cat my mother has willingly stroked (verdict: very soft) – progress!

We were given a five-minute warning when our time slot was up but didn’t feel rushed to leave (fastest hour ever). We said goodbye to the cats and headed out feline good!

The London Cat Village, 47 Rivington Street
Directions here