Should Mr Cat be allowed inside the cafe?

As a guy with four cats at home, I can confirm that Mr Cat is one of the friendliest, cleanest animals I’ve had the good fortune of meeting.

Mr Cat, the Phase 4 street cat, has had a rough couple of weeks. He first sustained a deep gash to his paw which had him limping around for several days. The injury hadn’t fully healed before he was seemingly attacked by someone (possibly a human) which led to him losing his eye.

You may have noticed the small campaign we started to collect donations for Mr Cat’s ‘enucleation’ surgery - to remove his severely damaged eye. The surgery and post-operative care cost us a little over Rs 14,000. Luckily, we not only managed to collect that amount in less than 36 hours, we even had to return donations to some of you generous folk as we’d already met our target.

Of course, now we can’t let Mr Cat back out into the streets just yet. He’s still recovering from his major surgery. Although he is allowed to roam outside during the day, he always returns to the cafe at night because he feels safer here. We’ve set up temporary accommodation for him at iO - The Space.

I get customer complaints sometimes about the presence of a 'billi’ (he’s actually a ‘billa’) inside the cafe. Their concern for hygiene is understandable, except that Mr Cat is a clean, fully-vaccinated little guy who has never once dirtied our cafe. He spends much of his time not on the streets, but in the corridors and verandas of The Riviera complex. He’s got little hair to shed, particularly in the winter season.

It’s uncommon to find cats inside cafes in Pakistan, but it happens all the time in places like Istanbul. One of my favorite things about Istanbul - a city I visit often - is having Turkish coffee with a side of baklava, as a friendly (and maybe somewhat entitled) cat jumps onto the chair next to you like, “Oh, hey guys! What did I miss?”.

And if you ever get a chance to visit London, be sure to check out Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

As a doctor, I don’t need to be convinced of how important good hygiene is, especially at a place that serves food. Cats do have some capacity to spread filth or damage the furniture but, well, don’t human kids? What do we do about them? Really, it depends on the animal, and the amount of effort being made by the caretaker to ensure a clean environment.

And no, it’s not like we allow just any street cat to walk into the cafe for a free lasagna. Mr Cat’s rather special - friendly, docile, mostly lazy.

We’d be very happy for someone to adopt him. We don’t think he’s well enough to survive in the street. He’s certainly no gangsta-cat; just a quiet, somewhat-chubby, fuzzy little thing.

What do you say? Let me know.