Surry Hills’ Space-Themed Cat Cafe Opened This Weekend, And Boy Did We Meet A Whole Lot Of Cats
We review the cafe. And the cats.
I enter the room, and Queen Barbarella is standing on a coffee table glaring at me as if she’s hated me her whole life. Her expression increases in disdain as I take a small step towards her, and tentatively extend my sweaty dog-person palm. She outright grimaces and leaps away with a flourish, from the table to a couch to a small landing at the top of a scratching post. Defiantly out of reach, she actually scratches her ear at me, so brazenly that I don’t know which way to look.
This cat despises me.
It’s then I notice Leeloo, arranged ridiculously in a nook underneath.
Leeloo lets me scratch the akimbo paw, before I boldly move to her head and neck and she leans right into my hand. With 15 cats in the room — hidden in tubes, on shelves, under tables and in boxes — the odds that one might actually tolerate me seem to be working in my favour.
This cat loves me.
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Welcome To Catmosphere
Catmosphere’s local offering is the passion project of Wenee Yap and her partner Thomas Derricort, two Sydney-siders who run their own start-up marketing business. Walking around Chiang Mai on a Thai Boxing holiday last October, they stumbled into a space-themed space where you could drink a coffee, eat a snack, and cuddle a whole bunch of cats. They liked what they saw, befriended the owner, and suggested opening a branch in Australia; when they returned, they inquired with Sydney Council and — just to test the waters — set up a Facebook page for a local Catmosphere in January.
The page went viral within a few days, and by the end of the week over 15 publications had written about a cafe which didn’t yet exist. Wenee and Thomas launched an IndieGoGo campaign, and raised over $40,000 through crowd-funding. With the rest of the money coming from their own funds and investors, they landed a venue in Surry Hills, shipped in some rescue cats who were in need of shelter and affection, and were suddenly ready for launch.
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So How Does It Work?
Cat cafes originated in Taiwan but proliferate in Japan, and this isn’t the first in Australia. Cat Cafe Melbourne holds that particular honour, after opening in July last year; since then there’s been Sydney Cat Cafe‘s pop-up kitten cafe in Darlinghurst, which announced another instalment this week before it becomes a permanent fixture, and the Cat Purrfection cafe in Roseville, which is part of the Chatswood Cat Palace. Now a tried and tested formula in Australia, Wenee and Tom were able to have a little fun with the concept. “If we were the first cat cafe in Australia, [the space theme] might have been a little too much at once.”
Set in an old Foveaux Street terrace house, the cafe part of Catmosphere is helmed by barista Yun Xia Segal, who has been the owner and manager of Kinokuniya Cafe for the past ten years. The beans, supplied by Karmee Coffee, are bolstered by handmade cakes from Yael’s, sandwiches from Luxe, as well as soup and home-made cat-shaped cookies.
The cafe is separated from the cats by way of airlock doors (the Council wouldn’t have it any other way), which lead to two separate menageries. The primary cat room is on the first floor; for $20, you’ll get a coffee, a cookie, and an hour with the animals — 15 in total, booked for a 1:1 human-to-cat ratio. (Though cats being cats, as Wenee points out, they “will do as they please and love who they want”.) The second room, on the ground floor, is for “warp speed” visits, which will be popular with hungover office workers in the area and available to book from next month. For around $8, you’ll get 15 minutes in a room with five cats; this room also has wheelchair access.
Although there are a few couches and chairs for the humans, the cats take precedence in these spaces, which are packed with scratching posts, private pods and climbing equipment, the walls lined with shelves at varying levels. It’s like what happens when you walk into a dark room: you might see a cat or two when you first enter, but once your eyes adjust, they’re everywhere.
This cat finds me ridiculous.
This cat is fairly unbothered about the whole thing.
This cat will continue to hate me forever.
Some of them want to love you. Some of them want to sleep. Some of them encourage you to bid for their attention with various pleas and promises, and then watch with laughing eyes as you embarrass yourself completely. These are the cats who will eventually be sitting on a shelf, hiding from your shame.
“What cats really need is height,” Thomas explains. “[We’ve made the rooms] so that when cats reach a point where they’re fed up with the adoration of humans — as cats often do — they can escape them.”
This cat has never laid eyes on anything worse than me in its entire life.
As with Melbourne Cat Cafe, Catmosphere doubles as a shelter; the 15 cats currently housed there come from the World League for Protection of Animals (WLPA). “We support Catmosphere because it’s a no kill initiative, and it’s humane — and I think it will offer some life quality to the animals,” says Dr Jonine Penrose-Wall, a WLPA co-ordinator and one of Catmosphere’s key liaisons. “Most of what we have to give these creatures is time, and a lot of love therapy. But what they really need is time.”
Wenee and Thomas decided against letting customers adopt the cats directly from Catmosphere. “Particularly for cats who are used to living in larger groups, it can be difficult to find the right dynamic,” Tom explains. “WLPA has a lot of cats who are already living together, so we were able to bring in an established community. If we created a revolving door environment, it would be very difficult for the cats who remain.” There may be room for open days in the future, and they’re planning to use Catmosphere to advertise cats who are up for adoption, too. “We’re hoping it will also act as a bit of a bridge for people who might consider adopting down the track but have nowhere to begin,” Thomas says. “So often you get people who adopt a tiny kitten and two months later they forget about it, or their living circumstances will change and they’ll realise they can no longer take responsibility. We want to educate people as well.”
This is the most perfect cat I have ever had the pleasure of being slowly licked by.
The venue’s “space” theme is still a work in progress, so far relegated to the names of the “catstronauts” themselves (Tabba The Hutt, Mewbacca, The Purrminator, et al.), and some original sci-fi movie posters adorning the walls (The Atomic Cat; Conquest of the Planet of the Cats). The most impressive interstellar homage comes by way of a giant, colourful mural painted across one wall in the outside dining area, documenting the felines’ varying journeys through the universe. One cat painted is Thomas’ late childhood cat, Shadow; another belonged to an early Catmosphere investor by the name of Igor Breakenback — Tom and Wenee’s martial arts instructor and a stuntman, who had a bit part as Hitler in Angelina Jolie’s 2014 film Unbroken but didn’t make the final cut.
“This man is as tough as they come, right, and one day he sat down with us and says, ‘Now look, there’s something I’ve wanted to discuss with you and it’s kind of hard to discuss, but for a long time I had this cat called Fluffy. I loved Fluffy. And then last year, Fluffy passed away,’ and then he started tearing up,” Tom laughs. “He said, ‘Now I want to find someway a Catmosphere that we can let Fluffy’s memory live on.'”
Fluffy is the cranky looking one in the fish-shaped spaceship to the right. Fluffy lives on.
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Catmosphere is open now at 66 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills; find out more and book time with the cats here.
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Photos by Steph Harmon.