New cat café to open in Wallsend to help rescue…

New cat café to open in Wallsend to help rescue kittens find their forever home

A new cat café is set to open in the North East this week with a gorgeous group of rescue kittens ready to meet customers.

Cookie, Perla, Misha, Raspberry and Trevor are the first rescue cats to take up residence at Bad Cat Café which will open on Wallsend High Street on Tuesday.

They were each found living stray as kittens and have been brought to the café with the aim of finding them a forever home. The cats will be available to be rehomed if they strike up a special bond with a customer who wants to adopt them.

Owners Tasmin Hirst and Roxanne Scott, from Wallsend, decided to open the cat café after looking for a new business venture together, which involved working with animals. They had previously worked together assisting people with brain injuries.

Tasmin said: "We were just sat in the office one day and discussing where we wanted to go after we finished at that job. We were both ready to move on and we both love animals so we were discussing ways that we could go self-employed with that.

"I'd been to a cat café recently and thought we could do something like that and after Googling how to go about it, it just kind of came together."

Rescue cat Raspberry who was a stray in Greece pictured at her new home at The Bad Cat Cafe in Wallsend, North Tyneside (Craig Connor/ChronicleLive)

Their idea became a reality when they secured a venue close to home and soon their first cat residents - Cookie, Perla, Misha, Raspberry and Trevor - moved into the café, giving them an opportunity to settle into their new surroundings before the café opens to customers.

Cookie, Perla and Misha have been rescued by Los Infiernos Rescue, in Spain, while Raspberry and Trevor have been rescued by Let's Be Smart rescue in Greece. The cat café has also been receiving help from Stray2Me rescue, who work with animals in Romania and are struggling at the moment due to the importation ban on cats and dogs from Romania.

Tasmin said: "We work with the rescue organisations and ask them for cats who are happy to live with other cats, will interact well with children and are happy to live around lots of people. They know their cats better than we do at that point and they pick the ones that will be the best the fit for us."

Bad Cat Café will open between 10am and 6pm on weekdays, except Thursdays when the café will be closed. On Saturday it opens between 9am and 5pm and on Sunday 10am until 4pm.

Bad Cat Café will open on Wallsend High Street (Newcastle Chronicle)

Tasmin said the idea behind the name 'Bad Cat Café' came about to "help take pressure off the cats". She added: "We didn't want it to become an expectation that people would visit and the cats would 'perform' for them.

"Cats will just ignore you sometimes. We want people to visit, and we are expecting that the cats will interact with people, but we don't want people to have the expectation that all of them will run straight up to people and play with them."

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