FELINE GOOD!

Cafés offering customers calming time with cats are on the rise across Britain but animal charities warn they may be doing moggies more harm than good. Daily Express writer JANE WARREN visits one establishment in Brighton to find out for herself

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A CAT called Phobos curls himself around my ankles. The Turkish Angora has fur as light and gauzy as sea foam, but just a year ago this dazzling feline was a ghost of himself — a ball of non-microchipped yellow fur who was grubby, unvaccinated, flea-ridden, and facing a grim future after his owners bought him unwittingly from a kitten farm having seen an online advert.

“After they collected him, they looked through a crack in the door and saw 40 more kittens,” says Phobos’s new owner, Avsar Kazmaz, the owner of Munchies Craft Cat Café and Bar in Brighton, Sussex.

The city’s first cat café is part of a growing nationwide trend for establishments that offer the soothing calm of time spent with cats, along with the pleasures of coffee and cake.

“They were really concerned about the cat they had bought, couldn’t afford vaccination, and, when they heard I was setting up the café, they asked if I would like to rehome him,” says Avsar, 36, who was born in Turkey.

Today, Phobos is a blissfully contented resident as Avsar makes coffee for guests, hands them the menu for her Turkish delights of mezze and cake and breaks off between tasks to interact with Phobos and her other much-loved cats - to the delight of her customers.

Phobos shares the space with his Turkish Angora companion Eros, another glorious pout of a cat, and six further felines who all move with the nonchalant ease of royalty.

The customers and I quietly bond over their mesmeric antics as they roll on a rug, climb the cat canopies on the walls and take turns to snooze inside a quirky, converted vintage television that says “meowtime”.

However, despite her evident concern for animal welfare, Avsar risks being caught up in the controversy surrounding these specialist cafés.

Animal welfare charities including the RSPCA and Cats Protection are calling for them to be “phased out”, claiming they may not meet the complex welfare needs of cats.