When I first got to Lady Dinah’s I thought, well this is a bit rubbish! I was showed downstairs where nary a cat could be seen and the ones I did spot were busy sleeping it up in their adorable little cat perches and houses. One cat was strolling around and everyone down there was pretending to nonchalantly get its attention but you could sense the desperation and I was not keen to throw my hat into the ring.
So we just ordered a drink and some food and hoped things would perk up. They did. More and more of the cats seemed to venture downstairs as the evening got later and they got in a friskier mood. (We were pretty much the last to leave.) Friendly rivalry helped to ensure that if one cat was playing then another probably wanted to join in and have some attention. (Though they clearly get attention in abundance not only from the visitors but the helpers on hand that play with them day-in, day-out. So it’s understandable why they tend not to show too much interest in whoever happens to come along that day.
But, y’know, cats are adorable even when they’re ignoring you and I got to stroke a few, and actually keep one entertained with some sort of feather on a string thing for a while, which is a lot more cat action than I’ve had in a good long while so I left feeling quite satisfied in the end.
Also, there’s a cat version of a hamster wheel which is obviously hilarious, and there’s also this Buddha of a cat that everyone fell in love with:
And the cakes were really good! So it’s a café worth visiting for the food even if you don’t get any cat love.
After dessert we thought we should probably go get some actual food so we went over to Radio Alice for pizza. I wasn’t sold on the concept. The pizzas are baked first and then dressed with their toppings. The chefs are so precious that swapping toppings is apparently not allowed. The pizza was nice enough – the dough was tasty but for me there was far too much of it compared with everything else so out of the huge number of pizza parlours out there, I can’t see me coming back to this one any time soon.
