Walking along Whyte Ave, you’ll find something new in the windows of a local cafe – cats. The adorable cat cafe is serving up beverages and giving you the option to entertain yourself with the in-house cat-residents, ready to pounce, play and entertain you while you sit and drink.
Admission is $15 to the Cat cafe on Whyte, and includes a beverage of your choice. The hot chocolate with whipped cream was a favourite of little cat-lady-in-training, but there’s an impressive roster of high-end coffee choices for you to sip on while you visit for the hour-long sessions.
Though it’s recommended to reserve ahead of time, online. 50% of admissions are based on reservations and 50% are available for drop-in, meaning that you might have to wait to get into the actual cat lounge, apart from the cafe. Don’t worry, it’s comfortable while you wait. We only had to wait about twenty minutes when we showed up without a reservation.
When it was our turn to enter the place where the cats are located, we walked in and spent a few minutes in the bright, airy front part of the cafe, where Violet played with a friendly cat she found, prompting the cat to jump across the shelves. She was a proud cat-tamer and kept going back to this one particular cat, she adored him/her.
Continuing to the back, there are comfortable and inviting couches, benches, chairs in the sitting area, where you’ll find more cats, more cat toys, and plenty of places to have intimate conversation, kind of like your sitting in the living room of your cat-lady grandmother who’s got a talent for picking out the most adorable throw pillows.
There, you can play, watch people play with the cats, sit and chat, while you finish your beverage. It’s an adorable space – and one that I can see us going back to again and again.
Not inherently one of the most kid-friendly places in the city, if you’ve got a child that’s obsessed with cats, it’s got to be on your list of places to go in Edmonton – especially if you don’t have a cat at home.