Мелисса Дэйли - Molly And The Cat Cafe

In addition to providing cat-loving humans with access to feline company, the cat cafés often have another purpose: to find permanent homes for their residents. Whereas Molly and her kittens are Debbie’s pets, many of the real cat cafés source their cats from local rescue shelters, and offer up the cats in their care for adoption.

The cats’ welfare is of the utmost importance for the cat cafés. Great care is taken to build a colony, usually of around a dozen cats, who will live peacefully alongside each other and whose temperaments suit the sociable atmosphere of a café. Precautions are taken to limit the number of customers allowed in the café at any one time in order to prevent the cats becoming stressed, and advance bookings are often necessary. Although some cat cafés provide outside space for their cats, others keep their cats indoors. I imagine the cats are unlikely to come and go as they please in the way that Molly does from her café.

Molly and the Cat Café is not intended to be a factually accurate account of a real cat café; it is the story of one cat and her search for a home. It is about the bond that forms between us and our feline companions; the strength of our love for them and, I would like to think, of their love for us. I believe it is the universal nature of this bond that drives the phenomenon of the cat café to worldwide success.

MD, June 2015

The Feline Fascination that inspired

Molly and the Cat Café

Whenever I catch sight of my cats observing me, beadily, from the top of a bookcase or through the banisters on the stairs, I can’t help feeling that they’re not so much watching me as gathering intelligence about me.

With their innate air of entitlement, my cats Nancy and Pip shamelessly exploit my family’s goodwill. My husband, children and I are at their beck and call, like servants trained to answer their every whim. On an average day, this not only involves feeding them on demand, but might also entail getting up to let them in through the front door because they can’t be bothered to use the cat flap, or sitting on the floor so as not to disturb them sprawled in blissful slumber across the sofa. Then there are the middle-of-the-night stumbles across the house to feed a noisily insistent Pip, or to open the airing cupboard door because Nancy has decided, for no apparent reason, that she simply must investigate its contents as a matter of urgency.

And I don’t think we’re alone. Any cat owner (or perhaps ‘cat own-ee’ might be more accurate, as we all know that you can never truly own a cat) would surely recognize the feeling that, in their home, it’s the cats who are in charge. There’s no doubt about it, cats are benign tyrants. And yet we humans indulge them, pandering to their demands and feeling privileged when they deign to show us any affection.

Deep down, I’ve always suspected that our cats know more about the world than they are letting on. I have spent many hours wondering what my cats get up to in their mysterious ‘other’ lives. Sometimes I get an insight, in the form of phone calls from concerned strangers telling us that Nancy has followed them home, or jumped into their car, or spent the evening at the local pub. And I suspect that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s something beguiling about their self-assurance, and their determined independence. Who hasn’t watched their feline disappear purposefully down the garden path and wondered what secret life she is heading off to, and whether she is, in fact, running multiple households in the neighbourhood, all of whom might think she belongs to them? While we’ll never know for sure, it’s reassuring that it’s our home they choose to return to.

In spite of their tantalizing aloofness, we remain convinced that, deep down, our cats love us. How else to explain the way cats intuitively know when we need them? Be it by climbing into bed next to us when we’re feeling unwell (and nothing beats a purring, furry hot water bottle), or cheering us up at the end of a long day with a friendly head-bonk – there’s nothing more comforting than a cuddle with a cat. And though they might act like selfish ingrates most of the time, those occasions when they show us love make it all worthwhile.

When I decided I wanted to write a novel about a cat, I knew the heart of the story would lie in the relationship between the cat and her owner. It also seemed natural to tell the story from the cat’s point of view. I wanted to explore the idea that, just as we are attuned to our cats’ needs, they are attuned to ours. By telling the story from the cat’s perspective I could imagine what goes through a cat’s mind when she sees her owner’s life going awry.

My conviction that, underneath their cool exteriors, cats care as much about us as we do about them, underpins events in my book Molly and the Cat Café . When café owner Debbie takes pity on stray tabby Molly she knows nothing about Molly’s history. She has no idea that, like herself, Molly has experienced loss and hardship in her life. Although Molly comes to understand how much she and her owner have in common, this is something that Debbie can never know. Likewise Debbie will never know what lengths Molly goes to in order to help her, both personally and professionally. Debbie thought she had rescued Molly; she never imagined Molly would be the one to rescue her.

This book would not exist were it not for the help and support of many people. Thanks to my editor Victoria Hughes-Williams and all the team at Pan Macmillan for your enthusiasm and input at every stage of this process; to my agents Diane and Kate at Diane Banks Associates for your commitment and professionalism; and to Claire Morrison at Maison de Moggy in Edinburgh, for taking the time to tell me how a real cat café works.

Special thanks also to Debbie, for allowing me to base my (human) heroine on you.

Big gratitude and love to Suse and Louis for your patience, and to Phil for carrying more than your fair share of the domestic burden so that I could write. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Melissa Daley lives in Hertfordshire with her two cats, two children and one husband. One of her cats, Nancy, has a writing pedigree of her own and can be found on Facebook as Nancy Harpenden-Cat. Melissa was inspired by the Cotswolds town of Stow-on-the-Wold, which provides the backdrop for this novel, Molly and the Cat Café .

Read on for an extract of Molly’s festive adventures in Christmas at the Cat Café…

Chapter 1

The honey-coloured buildings that bordered the Market Square glowed in the dazzling autumn sunshine. I sat in the dappled shade of an elm tree, watching as tourists and shoppers meandered back and forth along the cobbled streets, soaking up the town’s atmosphere of prosperous gentility.

A cool breeze ruffled my fur and I inhaled deeply, savouring the scent of fallen leaves mingled with the aroma of meats and cheeses from the delicatessen behind me. The clock in a nearby church tower had just struck five and I knew that the bustling square would soon give way to a slower pace, as the shops closed for the day and the visitors made their way home. I yawned and jumped down from the wooden bench, taking my time to stretch languorously before setting off on my own homeward journey.

Keeping to the pavement, I trotted past the numerous tea shops, antiques dealers and gift stores that lined the square, then cut in front of the stone steps of the imposing Town Hall. The gaggles of grey-haired ladies in sturdy shoes barely noticed me weaving between them, preoccupied as they were with making the most of their last opportunity to buy, before climbing back into their waiting coaches. When I first arrived in the Cotswold town of Stourton-on-the-Hill as a homeless cat, the indifference of strangers would have upset me, but now I strode along, my tail held high, buoyed by the knowledge I, too, had a home to return to.