Latest Cat Interlude

I had an unfortunate experience at my usual Cat Cafe on Monday. I don't want to discuss it. However, having had my belief in there being no such thing as a 'bad cat' severely shaken I decided to give that bunch a break and go back to Ebisu. My first visit was back in March and it was a bit busy. This time it was just me for most of my hour and proved a very pleasant interlude.

These two (below) were curled up together last time.

I thought the original one would object when the other tried to get in too but no, they were very happy together and it was so sweet when they were cleaning each other. They both had such long fur that sometimes they were cleaning themselves instead.

Beautiful blue eyes.

This little one was all playful and rolling around.

This one kept nudging the bowl until the water slopped over and then happily drank it from the floor.

This one still fascinated me with his/her amazing fur.

I was able to stroke her this time and could see the fur next to her body was white, only changing to black nearer the tip. I've never seen that before and she is so beautiful! I can't help wondering what her parents looked like.

And then of course there was Bruiser. Still as angry and pissed off as he was in March and still reminiscent of Phil Mitchell on Eastenders.

He kept coming and sitting near but not next to me wherever I was, and staring at me. I decided he wanted my attention but didn't want to look like he did, so, risking my fingers, I tentatively gave him a stroke.

His fur is as thick as any sheep fleece but as soft as velvet. It was like stroking a very deep, expensive rug.

It lasted for about 4 minutes. I was just stroking his head when he went to bite me. Ah well. One has to maintain one's reputation so I didn't take it personally.

The best possible shop to have outside a cat cafe is a shop where everything is cat themed.

My faith in cats, even cats like Bruiser, has been reinstated.

Nyafe Melange Cat Cafe in Ebisu

When Pooch told me there was a cat cafe within 10 minutes walk of our flat I was a bit skeptical. My experiences at the Ikebukero cafe had shown that these cafes could be pretty variable plus his idea of 10 minutes walk is very different to mine. So when I hopped on the bus for 15 minutes to get there I was playing it cool.

In size it is about half the size of Calico in Shinjuku with the above at one end of the single room and a wall of windows with more seating and cat beds at the other end. The cats can also get completely away from visitors off to the right of the above picture if they want to. There were about 12 cats all together with these two winning 'most adorable couple'.

There was quite a lot of friendliness in evidence.

The guys below were funny. The cat on the right was there first and the one on the left basically sat down and wriggled about til he/she was comfy.

It's not like there was a shortage of beds either - they just seemed to enjoy doubling up. You can't tell from the photos but they both had amazing eyes - like old fashioned clear glass marbles but one with blue centres and one with green. It was very striking.

There was also politics. The occasional tricky pass to be negotiated on the high levels...

And then there was Bruiser.

I thought he looked very sweet at first, then I saw his face. Even with the scottish fold breed ears this was clearly not a cat to mess with! He swaggered up and down the room with his shoulder muscles rolling and swatted at any cat that hadn't already got out of his way.

He wasn't above a bit of stroking but not until he'd put on a boxing show. But seriously - how can you be intimidated by a pussycat with pads on his feet that pink! It was like Barbie had a cat habit and this was him.

One other notable resident was this guy who was amazing to look at.

He was charcoal coloured but when you looked at the fur closer to his body it was pretty much white - so when he moved you got these lines of grey and white appearing. Plus if you look closely he's got an almost bengal type pattern of stripes in his fur. Very special. (All my photos are rather blurry because I had the flash turned off.)

All in all it was a good way to spend an hour but I've been spoiled by Calico Cat Cafe. Even when this little guy decided to sit under me when I crouched down to take a photo...

...it didn't change my mind. It may be twice the distance but I'll still be heading back to Shinjuku for my cat fix in future.

Cats and Magazines

Friday was a pretty good day for me. It all started with my first ever visit to a cat cafe.

I arrived about 10 minutes after opening and it was still breakfast time.

When I go again (when, not if) I will make it a little later as anyone who knows cats knows that they do not want to be stroked while eating and that after eating they just want to have a wash. The one little guy I'd spotted online and particularly wanted to look at was this one.

He hasn't got his ears down in anger - he's one of those cornish type cats who have folded down ears which I've never seen in real life before. So cute! But he was clearly not in the best of moods and took himself up to the highest possible perch and this is all I saw of him after that.

The place was very clean but with lots of toys and sleeping places for the cats. This is where folded-ears was - right at the top.

I positioned myself on the heated carpet (like an electric blanket but a carpet which are apparently quite coming in homes where carpeting is really unusual) and these two settled near me.

I mainly stroked the brown one who got more and more elongated as she got more and more relaxed.

Her buddy wasn't terribly friendly until the owner (who all the cats adored and who clearly adored all of them) came over to brush her. She rolled on her back and...

...then she just stayed like that! So adorable! She was quite happy for any of us to come and stroke her incredibly soft tummy and as for her pinkest nose and paws...squee!

Initially being there was quite bizarre and freaky but as my hour came to an end (I could have stayed longer but thought that was enough for a first trip) I felt much more comfortable.

After such excitement I thought I'd spend the afternoon curled up with a craft magazine and found a place nearby called Libro. Ladies with a penchant for japanese craft books and magazines may want to sit down.
Knitting and Crochet:

Sewing and Patchwork:

"Japanese Crafts":

That wasn't the whole selection either. There were so many more on every topic you can imagine. I went home with just one which I thought was amazingly strong willed of me.

A Delayed Visit to London's Only Cat Cafe

When I first heard about the crowdfunding campaign to get a cat cafe open in London I was all over it like a rash. I was so excited. I signed up and pledged my hard earned wonga and then sat back, eagerly awaiting the opening date. That was at the start of 2013, and shortly afterwards I found out I'd be moving to Japan which then finally happened in November of that year. I vaguely remember that the cat cafe was supposed to have opened by then but got held up by planning permission, so I was already in Tokyo and whooping it up in the cat cafes there by the time Lady Dinah's opened its doors.

In return for my funding I got a "Nine Lives Card" entitling me to a discount on the £6 or so cover charge for a 90 minute visit for my first nine visits. Saturday was my first! The staff were very friendly and I was seated at my own table downstairs.

There were cat perches everywhere and sure enough there were about five of the seven or so cats sleeping in different spots.

Some of these were accessible and some weren't. Before I went I had read one of their updates online saying that some people had been disappointed with the number of cats that were sleeping during their visit. I read that statement in the context of Tokyo's cat cafes and assumed the disappointment was due to the cats not running after profered toys or jumping into laps. What I hadn't realised was that you are not allowed to touch sleeping cats, even if they are sleeping right next to you. That basically meant that there were two cats to "go around" what turned out to be a really large number of people for the space. If the downstairs room was a cafe I would have described it as definitely full. Perhaps 20 people were down there? And half an hour after I got there - in what was the first "sitting" of the day - more people arrived and were seated at the tables upstairs in the play room. What quickly happened was that as soon as any of the awake cats did something (such as walk across the room) it was immediately surrounded by a little crowd.

The cat cafes in Tokyo and Seoul were never anywhere near this crowded and often I'd be the only one there for at least some of my visit.

On their website, Lady Dinah's talk about how some overseas cat cafes deprive cats of food so they beg customers for treats - something I never saw in Tokyo or Seoul - but at Lady Dinah's the cats instead were stimulated with some sort of powdered chicken treat. Initially this was done by staff but they then handed it to visitors so the cat in question would interact with them. This is what that looked like.

An even bigger crowd around the cat involved. If you were at the front of the crowd you got to pet the cat. Otherwise, you got to watch other people do it.

While I can understand that the thinking behind Lady Dinah's is all to protect the cats, I feel there might be a bit of anthropomorphism going on. If your own cat was asleep at home, you wouldn't fear upsetting its emotional balance by stroking it. And if the cat was peeved at being disturbed it would go and sleep somewhere else. The same thing used to happen in the Tokyo cafes I went to. Cats wishing for a good snooze would sleep up high.

Cats open to a bit of doze/tickle would stay low.

Afterall, these cafes are only open for about 8 hours a day so that leaves another 16 for undisturbed r+r.

On reflection I felt that if I had never been to any other cat cafes I would have been satisfied with the experience on offer at Lady Dinah's. In fact I felt the word "experience" summed it up pretty well. It is a "cat experience" and a cafe. It was only having experienced a "cat cafe" as they were originally intended to be that made the name a misnomer in this case. However, as the Knit Harlot once said when I asked her for her opinion about knitting needles on planes (at the time they were banned) "It's their plane so it's up to them to decide what can go on them." So it follows that this is their cafe and their cats (I forget who exactly 'they' are) so it's up to them to decide when you can stroke them. However, I won't be needing the other eight of my nine lives so if anyone in the UK would like the card let me know and I'll post it to you.

One thing about the cafe is its very interesting location - on Bethnal Green Road. This is a low income area of London, coincidentally where I was living when I met The Pooch. You will not find many other hipster places just here which, let's face it, is basically what Lady Dinah's is. Depending on the way you choose to walk you can end up walking through parts of Shoreditch which has been gentrified and is now full of hipsters wearing layers of grey, black and plaid. This means the graffiti, something I quietly admire in general, is a mix of traditional and modern. You get the more artsy stuff...

...on hoardings surrounding current building work while longer-term walls hiding waste ground get a more transitional treatment.

My personal favourite on this trip was this thuggish Peppa Pig amid a load of tags.

Having had to draw Peppa umpteen times for my ickle niece I admired this artist's work. That's assuming it is Peppa. For all I know it could be a Hipster Icon and Peppa is simply an ironic reworking of it. In which case I need to rewatch the "Muddy Puddles" episode and think in more depth about the subtext.

Crafty Divergence

It's not something any crafter likes to have occur to them, but I have been wondering if I have too many different projects on the go. Lots of knitting projects - yes. Lots of sewing projects - yes. But lots of projects, each one for a different craft - no. My brain is trying to think of too many things at once. The tipping point seems to have been casting on the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I made this before when I was heavier and wore it a lot but gave the too large jumper away when we moved to Japan.

I bought some RichMore Percent Gradation from Yuzawaya this week having got bored of wearing the three warm jumpers I have here in rotation non-stop for the last two months. I remain optimistic about the unexpectedly stripy effect working out for the best, despite the evidence so far. This was begun on top of the latest EPP project I've started - making the base of a new bag.

This uses the bundle of Japanese cottons I bought at the Quilt Show last month which looked blue together but which are definitely more green when pieced like this. I do adore this type of fabric which doesn't seem to have a name in Japan. The cotton is thicker than quilting cotton with a slightly brushed effect which makes it feel very soft. The patterns are woven rather than printed which also increases the bulk where there is a feature such as a flower (top row, 3rd from the right) or a dot (second row, 1st on the left). These features also give it a lovely texture and the colours are all very dusty and muted. Beautiful. I have also been hand sewing the roof of the little 'house' sewing box I also got at the quilt show.

I've been using printed Japanese cottons for this. These have the same kind of weave as the above ones but tend to be darker and with a pattern printed rather than woven in. I picked up this sample pack at Okadaya. I have a chimney ready to go and am going to hand quilt some roof tiles before adding some binding. Then I have been decoding the back of this.

I had done quite well using this page of common sewing terms but then had to get Pooch to help with the last few. The sizing is quite impressive - for people from 48cm tall to 180cm. Japanese patterns tend to go on height rather than 'size 14' or 'Medium' which makes sense really. It is certainly handy when it comes to baby clothes since my 9 month old niece now wears a 12-18 month size. So that means my mind is also full of sewing clothes. I plan a sample dark blue cotton jacket with added sashiko stitching. I've always wanted one like that since first discovering sashiko embroidery a few years ago. Then lastly I finally found a decent sized polystyrene ball so can set about trying my first Kimekomi Ball.  

They are kind of fabric temari balls - something Knitting on the Green taught me to make many moons ago. But instead of effectively embroidering the ball you make cuts in it, using the same measuring technique as with temari, and then wrap the fabric around it, pushing it into the cuts to hold it. So my mind is also full of those.

As a break from all this self-imposed craft pressure I took myself off to the beloved cat café yesterday. The cats were all extremely mellow - I think it was the sunshine after the snow. This lady, called Yuzu, in particular was loving the sun patch she found herself in.

She only woke up when her sister Anzu came over and started cleaning her before doing the same to herself. They are both a breed called Ocicat which are spotted like wildcats despite having completely domesticated cat DNA. They are very beautiful.

Her waking up meant she was in time to see this guy...

...wake up and take it into his head to have a chew on the folder he'd been sleeping on. He is called Nats and is an Abyssinian. They are quite wiry with very short but very soft and silky fur.

Nats and his sister Coco are usually to be found playing with the toys and cantering down the room before doing a death defying leap from one ceiling height perch to another so it was quite unusual to see Nats so docile. Two others deserve special mention. Ramu is a very beautiful Ragamuffin cat - they tend to go limp when picked up and are quite big and very soft and fluffy.

Ramu likes being up high so she was on top of the cat tower and every now and again a whole leg or her tail would drop down through the hole.

Very cutely she was thrilled when another visitor started playing with her with the rope you can see above. This breed is known for being quite playful but also quite lazy so she rolled around on the platform while the rope appeared first on one side and then the other. She didn't seem bothered about catching it, she was just enjoying keeping track of where it was. Very sweet. The other I spotted when I was just leaving. This is Lili who is a Ragdoll - very similar to the Ragamuffin but not quite as fluffy.

When I first caught sight of her I thought with horror that her face had swollen up but on closer inspection she's cradling her face with her paw! I've never seen a cat do this before and the staff were really amazed by it too and immediately started taking pictures for the website. She seemed very comfortable and didn't move it when she woke up amongst all the attention. So all in all it was a very mellow and happy visit! And now, back to the...what? Knitting? Sewing? Ah...supermarket run!