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Shoreditch Adventures: A morning at Lady Dinah's Cat Café... with a cat allergy
Other | Friday 14th November 2014 |
I love cats, but in a cruel twist of fate I have suffered a debilitating cat allergy for all of my life. What better way for me to spend a Thursday morning, then, than to take a trip to one of East London’s most edgy new attractions - the hotspot on everyone’s lips, although few have actually been through its famous doors. Jacked up on the strongest anti-allergy meds I could find, I finally visited Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium. It’s not something anyone can just spontaneously roll into off Bethnal Green Road, however; 90 minute slots at the café are few and far between. This place is as booked up as any cool new celebrity chef restaurant - it takes some advance planning to get a booking. It’s all for a good reason though - the owners don’t want to stress the cats out too much, so it’s vital that they only have a certain number of people in at any one time. I was half expecting a discerning bouncer on the door to decide whether I was worthy of spending time near London’s biggest celebrity cats.(they all have their own Twitter accounts).
Instead, after eyeing up the monster-sized croissants in the waiting room, we were shown through to a hushed middle room where we were instructed to wash our hands and given some of the ground rules. You could feel the excitement in the air as we were finally led through to main café. Comprised of two floors, this was a real, modern-day Egyptian shrine to cats: between normal café-style tables and chairs, there was a giant hamster wheel for cats, little water tanks with pretend fish inside, tunnels, tubes and boxes everywhere, and brightly coloured climbing equipment over the walls. For humans, there were cat themed books (The Good, The Bad and The Furry) board games (Mouse Trap) and lattes topped with cat faces.
The menu featured a huge array of delicious and unusual teas and cakes: I had a rose petal tea and a slice of vegan banana custard cake, whilst my friend had a vanilla cupcake with a towering icing topping and a salted Caramel Latte, adorably named after one of the Emporium’s favourite cats: The Donnie. This wasn’t like any old café though - people were barely even paying attention to their food, or even chatting to each other. All eyes were on the cats, who were sleeping, hiding and climbing around the visitors.
The real highlight for me was the two adorable twin kittens, who were by far the liveliest, seemingly never running out of energy and clearly annoying the older, somnolent cats. We all competed for their attention with an array of toys dotted around the café - all Londoner stiff upper lips were abandoned, as Shoreditch hipsters and middle-class mums all united in their mutual love and respect for cats.
It was almost like a less creepy, meat-market West End club, where the cats are the girls and the bottles of Grey Goose are fishing rods with stuffed mice on the end.
As our waitress came over to collect our payment at the end of our visit, there was a problem with the card machine connected to a slightly battered looking iPad. “Sorry”, she explained, “yesterday I was taking a payment on this iPad whilst holding a toy in the same hand and a cat just came up and hit it all out of my hands, and I haven’t been able to type numbers since. You can always blame the cats in this place.” Brilliant.
