Lady Dinah’s Emporium: Coffee, Cakes & Cats
By Alex Moss
If there’s one thing in abundance in London, or any city for that matter, it’s coffee shops, tearooms and eateries selling an endless array of hot beverages. Clearly you need to stand out from the crowd if you want to beat the competition. Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium is one such coffee shop that is taking this need to differentiate to extremes. For Life caught up with Lauren Pears to find out what goes into creating a shop that specialises in cats and coffee.
For people living in busy cities it doesn’t always seem right to have a cat. After all they are social, inquisitive animals who should be able to roam outside of the confines of a city flat. Lauren was inspired by something she had encountered in Japan, “I’d been living in London for about four and a half years at the time and I was used to having pets at home — as a child we always had pets. I’d been to a cat cafe in 2009 in Japan, and thought ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have one in London?’”
The presence of the cats, even if they’re just comfortably sleeping, can be very comforting because they’re so relaxed they pass that on
The result was London’s first cat cafe, a place where you can have a relaxing time in the company of a collection of adopted cats whilst sipping on hot beverage. In a world where people are constantly in a rush to do something or get somewhere, Lady Dinah’s is an antidote to the rat race.
Animals are famous for soothing us highly strung humans and Lady Dinah’s is tapping into that sentiment. “The presence of the cats, even if they’re just comfortably sleeping, can be very comforting because they’re so relaxed they pass that on.”
While most eateries go out of their way to avoid mixing animals and food together, Lady Dinah’s embraces the two. Within reason, of course. Lauren points out that cats are not permitted in the food preparation areas but you do need to keep an eye on your food, as she says, ‘in the same way you would if you were eating outside and a pigeon was looking to steal your chips.’
We don’t make cats stay here that aren’t enjoying it
The cats in Lady Dinah’s are able to get up to all manner of mischief, including an unfortunate encounter for a Cat Yoga instructor who had to deal with a flatulent moggie who made his feelings about cat yoga very clear. Lauren tries to suppress a laugh when she says, “It was very funny but very naughty.”
Cat yoga instructors aside, Lady Dinah’s primary focus is the wellbeing of their most important residents, the cats themselves. “If you have cats, you might think you know what they’re like but when you have nine of them then you realise you don’t know cats, just your own. They’re all so different.”
While the old adage, the customer is always right, is certainly true in Lady Dinah’s, the cats always come first. Lauren says, “We don’t make cats stay here that aren’t enjoying it. The cats who do live here are cats that we feel if we removed them they might become distressed by the lack of attention rather than the other way round.”
Lauren’s determination to make a go of Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium is irresistibly inspiring. Interestingly, her career was very much going down another route, namely the gaming industry. So how do you go from games to cats? “Somebody I worked with pointed out to me that I didn’t get nearly as excited about games as I do about animals on the internet. And it was true. It was one of those moments, an epiphany, in which I realised I loved what I don’t do more than what I do do.”
The moral of the story? Follow your dreams, especially if it involves cats.
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