Ever since my first visit to an animal cafe, which was a bunny cafe in Tokyo, I’ve been dying to visit more. Fortunately the Japanese craze quickly came across to the UK and various cafes have popped up all over the place, and when Matthew suggested that we visited Cat Cafe on our trip to Manchester at the weekend, I knew there’s no way we’d miss that opportunity!

Because the cafe works on a 50% booking and 50% walk in basis, and all the bookings for Sunday were taken, we had to hope for a walk-in slot, and we did only have to wait about 15 minutes before our name was called. We agreed to the kitty-care rules, sanitised our hands and popped our shoes in a locker, and entered what I can only describe as happiness..

The cafe was decked out to be cat heaven. There were toys and beds and cat-trees, and even walkways suspended from the ceiling for the cats to explore and escape to their hearts content. I was quickly on the hunt for a cat I could love, so Matthew was in charge of ordering drinks, and we found a little table where we could sit on the floor.

The cats were all over the place, and it was definitely cat-nap time as most of the snoozed in the sunshine, or tucked away in little kitty houses away from prying eyes. You’re not allowed to wake sleeping kitties, so at times it was hard to find a cat that wasn’t surrounded by people, but the closer you looked, the more cats you spotted! We were also really lucky to be in the cafe during kitty lunch time – and the cats knew it was coming as soon as their little tables appeared!

You pay £1 for every 5 minutes in the cafe and that included limitless drinks, paying extra only for any cakes or snacks, and we stayed for 50 mins, so paid £10 each, and in that time we each had a hot chocolate and an apple juice – but you could easily squeeze in more drinks to get even more for your money! We also saw at least 10 different cats, ranging from little to large, short-hair to super fluffy, and because the staff limit the number of people in the cafe at any one time, there’s tonnes of space and when the cats are active, plenty to go around!

This is what happiness looks like.

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