Catmosphere Cat Cafe — Restaurant in Sydney

Disappointing

Realistically speaking it is very difficult to deliver a consistently enjoyable encounter with cats, even if they all have an outgoing personality. Unfortunately this is one of the daunting challenges faced by Catmosphere. I was booked with a group for an early afternoon session and when we arrived almost every single animal was asleep and clearly disinterested in visitors. When lunch arrived for the animals, there was a stir of activity but only one or two out of roughly a dozen animals showed any interest in being petted.

Overall the impression received is that the animals were tired, grumpy (but not aggressive) and for the most part wanted to be left alone. If the staff’s knowledge was anything to go off; some of the resident animals (which were the ones NOT up for adoption) are meant to be particularly outgoing but even they seemed to immediately tire of our company. The animals are given breaks to recover but it seems that trying to build a profitable business around a schedule doesn’t really lead to a great experience for the cats or the visitors.

While the staff clearly adore and have bonds with the animals, it seems that not all of them are receiving the care they require. Several of them seemed unwell but one in particular seemingly had poor self-care, as its coat was in poor condition and it was clear that nothing was being done about it. If a cat is not grooming due to stress it shouldn’t be in that environment. If it is not grooming due to poor self-care habits, it should be cleaned by its carers. The very same cat also had a less than subtle eye infection. In such a social environment with both other cats and pat-happy humans, this is unsanitary and careless.

The staff are helpful, informative, clearly in love with the animals, approachable and well-mannered. The beverages were fine but the cat cookies are bland, peculiar in texture and being a cat shaped memento, would have served the experience better as a fridge magnet.

To Catmosphere’s credit, they are trying to do something very difficult; and the beauty of an environment such as this, is that it would be a great way to fall in love with a cat for adoption and kudos to Catmosphere for attempting to find the non-resident cats homes. Unfortunately however it doesn’t succeed in creating that ideal environment. Again, it’s just a tiring and tedious experience for both the cats and the visitors.

Moreover the petting area stank of cat urine and almost every surface was sticky. While there is a single hand wash station available downstairs, not much care is given to hygiene inside the petting area.

If you’re looking for a cat for adoption, find a pet vendor with rescues who are kept in good health -I wouldn’t advise adopting one from this place. If you’re simply looking for a petting session and you have a loving and affectionate cat at home, or have a friend with an outgoing cat, your time would be better spent with them, a good cuppa and the cookie of your choice from the...

I've been to Catmosphere about 6 times within the past 3 years. I've had high hopes every time and I really wish I could say I always have a wonderful time, but unfortunately my experiences have always been subpar for two main reasons:

Poor communication and lack of updates.

There is no phone number I can call and every time I have emailed this place through the form provided on their website I have never, ever gotten a response.

Cat yoga is not available at the moment but the website was not updated to reflect this. Instead, it instructs you to book the entire room out. Again, since I couldn't contact anyone to confirm this, I didn't find out about this until I turned up on the day for my booking. There were no attempts to remedy this situation, and though we were still able to go to the room I had booked and spend time with the cats, it was an incredibly unsatisfying experience and could have been easily avoided if Catmosphere had taken the steps to simply write a reply to my email, update the website or provide some kind of compensation.

Overwhelming smell.

I've been to every single room this place has to offer and every time you step into any of the rooms, you are just hit in the face with the smell of cat litter. This place needs better ventilation or air purifiers. It is unfair and should not be an expectation for guests to have get used to the smell when they are also drinking beverages and expecting to stay for the full hour. I've been to many other animal and cat cafes both in and outside of Australia and this level of smell is not normal.

There are other minor issues I have - the drinks don't seem to be made very well despite the fact that this is a cafe (sugar in my tea not dissolved properly and sank to the bottom, no tools provided to be able to stir it myself), there is no warning call when your time is almost up, the website and booking confirmation flip flops between saying I have 50 minutes vs 1 hour for my session, none of the cats in any room were interested in any form of human interaction, but I felt it was more important to highlight the two main issues I have above.

Unfortunately, as they don't have a phone number and they don't respond to emails, I felt this was the only place where I could be heard. I don't feel like this would have been sufficiently addressed in person since a lot of these issues aren't a one-off incident and have been going on for years. As I've mentioned, I genuinely always had high hopes for this place whenever I visited, but I think I've been disappointed too many times now, and I sincerely hope management sees this and decides to make the changes to turn this place into the wonderful establishment it can be and deserves to be.

I'm genuinely sad to say that I think this will be the final time I ever visit and until these two main issues are fixed, I would not recommend this place. There are other cat cafes in Sydney that provide a much better experience that I would...

I have been to a lot of Cat Cafes in multiple countries and I have to say this is the worst by far. I am actually concerned about the welfare of these cats.

We booked the Cat Lounge because I love senior cats. We arrived and first impressions were good: we were greeted by a nice member of staff and I was given a locker for my stuff. Then we were taken upstairs and the smell hit me straight away. It smelt like no one had changed an incontinent persons bedsheets in years. As we walked into the cat lounge I felt like I was going to be sick.

We had a very brief introduction which consisted of being shown the eldest cat and asked which drink we would like.

The room was about 5-6m x 4m and contained around 12 cats. There were very few toys around to interact with the cats, the floor near the litter trays was covered in dust and litter despite the cafe having been closed before we arrived and there was only 6 litter boxes - some of which were automated. It seems like they were relying on those to clean the trays but I could see smeared dried diarrhoea around the entrance to the box as well the non automatic ones being full with multiple stools and urine pools. I ended up giving my drink to my partner because I couldn’t stomach it.

The room was boiling hot despite there being some coolers in the room and the window being open. They would benefit from black out blinds to keep the cats cool. This is autumn, I hate to think how hot the poor kitties would have got in summer. Unfortunately the heat intensified the smell.

The other thing which concerned me is there was no list of rules on the walls/tables for interacting with the cats and no staff member was present for any of the encounter bar bringing us a drink. There was 1 camera which could see about 70% of the room but I feel as though if someone had ulterior motives they would easily hurt a cat without the staff being able to act on it. Or if a cat attacked a visitor they would have no witness to defend it.

The eldest cat has funky white eyelids which could easily have been caused by age but there was no reassurance from the staff that this was being treated.

The cats seemed very sad and lonely and without many toys about I resorted to playing with the locker key and moving my hand under a blanket to engage with them which sparked their interest.

I understand these are rescue kitties and they have been taken from worse environments but that doesn’t excuse the conditions they are currently kept in.

I really don’t understand the consistent 5* reviews of this place - I can only hope those people leaving reviews don’t also own cats. I hope the owners take my suggestions on board and start making changes to help improve the daily and long term conditions...