Within four days of the Reddit community getting a whiff that a Canberra cat café might not be up to scratch, Tabby Time Cat Café & Child Care Service closed its doors.

Introducing itself to the Canberra community, the cat café quickly caught attention for the fact that it was run from someone’s home and didn’t serve any drinks or food.

Always interested in the idea of cat cafés, Felicity Banks decided to launch her own right here in Canberra.

“I thought, ‘great, I have experience running very small businesses from my home, I’ll do a really tiny thing where the focus is all on cats because there’s a lot of places to get coffee but there’s nowhere to get time with cats’,” says Ms Banks.

Already having an ABN, home business insurance, working with vulnerable people’s card, first aid certificate, recent police check and foster cats in her care, she said she assumed she was good to go.

Her living room would be the ‘café’, which is what she does when friends come over, while the master bedroom and ensuite would remain the cats’ domain. Ms Banks noticed that the kittens seemed invigorated when people came over, and while her time with the kittens is only temporary, it seemed like a good time to launch the business.

“Then, when these kittens move out, I can either just close the café for a few weeks, see what my next foster kittens are like, I can potentially borrow kittens back from the owner or I can speak to other foster carers in the area who might have quite social kittens.”

A visit to the café would set you back $40 an hour, which Ms Banks acknowledges is more than a usual cat café but says she had to ensure it was worth her while. Basing her pricing structure on previous small ventures, she knew what she didn’t want to do this time.

“One of my charities is a food pantry; I try and make things affordable, I’ve made the mistake of making things too affordable in the past, so I pitched it a little high,” she says.

“I had to do it so it was worthwhile to me and so that if my health goes downhill in the future, I have enough to hire staff while I stay on site. In case there’s some kind of trouble, like a customer who’s not respecting the cat or there’s an injury, I’d be on site, but I’d be able to be down in bed.”

Ms Banks believes Tabby Time could have been helpful to other foster carers, who like her, are at home a lot with illness or disability and have limited access to income opportunities. She approached Paws for More with the idea.

“I talked a little bit to the organisation and they were kind of open to the idea, cautiously open. And then I ran ahead and soft launched it and it turned out to be a very big launch,” says Ms Banks.

Taking off when a screenshot of the Tabby Time post in the Canberra Community Noticeboard Facebook page made it to the ‘Mildly Infuriating’ subreddit, Ms Banks was scrambling to catch up. She says while some commenters thought it was too expensive to just play with cats, others were excited by the idea.

“The first day or two, even after it went on Reddit, it was all pretty okay. People were mocking the idea and they were unhappy about the lack of coffee.”

However, Ms Banks says there was an undertone of hatred in some of the comments, bringing up concerns over animal welfare which she says got very serious, very fast.

“I knew the animals were safe, the foster organisation knew the animals were safe, anyone who’s actually been to the café, which was literally three people, knew the animals were safe. It’s a bit hard to tell that to people who don’t even live in Canberra who are fiercely angry.

“They called the RSPCA which I was like ‘Great, that’ll fix it because the RSPCA will come, they’ll inspect, they can see everything, that’ll put this to bed.’”

The RSPCA and Domestic Animal Services conducted an inspection, Ms Banks says everything went fine, they just recommended extra water bowls. However, the foster organisation was already on its way to collect the kittens, 2 of which she refused to hand over.

“Of course, it looks terrible that I refused to give up two of the kittens but at the time it seemed like the best thing for the kittens. Because the foster organisation is interstate, it is quite a long way to travel with people that had never met the kittens before.

“I felt that although the organisation has a duty of care, I also have a duty of care, and the future owner also has some rights. I felt like the kitten’s welfare plus my concerns about the travel and other future actions might not be good for the kittens because of the overreaction. Me plus the kittens’ welfare plus the owner outweighed Paws for More.”

Those two kittens are now with their owner and Ms Banks has been removed from the Paws for More foster carer registry, a decision she says was amicable.

“They can’t work with me until every possible concern has been allayed which I respect. I would rather that there was an overreaction to an accusation of animal cruelty than that there was no reaction. In a way, it’s a happy ending, because no animals were harmed at any time, even if some people were harmed.”

On Thursday 11 January, Ms Banks announced on the Tabby Time Facebook that the café was shut down with the inclination it would not be permanent.

“Other than public liability, all my paperwork was in order. I should have gone slower just because of the association with the foster organisation, that would be my regret. Although I didn’t actually do anything wrong, the speed of the business’s publicity has caused harm to the foster organisation.”

Even with the announcement that operations had seized, the comments continued. Redditors and Facebook users point out their concerns about the business model.

Laughs and outrage flowed at the idea that they would have to bring their own coffee and drinks to the cat café.

“I did not expect people to be hugely angry there was no coffee, I thought it was fairly obvious you wouldn’t want to be having hot coffees around kittens. There’s not enough space here to have a separate area for coffee where you can observe the kittens but not interact with them. Until I increase the size of the venue which is a big deal financially, I don’t think coffee is a plausible option.”

Replying to some of the posters, Ms Banks says she could offer guests a cup of tea, weak milo or perhaps a stale cracker she found in the pantry. For some, this was salt in the wound and also blurred the food service line.

“I never actually did give anyone food or drink, I didn’t realise that you can’t even offer a single sealed bottle of coke for free or even tap water is considered food retail. I underestimated the strictness of the food laws,” she says. 

A huge red flag for commenters was the Child Care Service part of the business, particularly the mention that it might be able to be covered by the NDIS. Ms Banks says she is a professional babysitter and is paid through the NDIS for one client with chronic illness who cannot look after her child for a full day.

“If other people are not well enough to mind their children for a full day, those children should be able to come to the cat cafe because it’s also a babysitting service. It is possible if there’s a small enough number of children and if they’re old enough and responsible enough to be trusted then in those circumstances, it might be possible for the NDIS to pay for that babysitting,

“People got the wrong idea because I guess they didn’t understand that under certain circumstances, what funds can be used for.”

Ethics were questioned about the fairness to the foster kittens, some of them too young to be put up for adoption yet. Then the animal cruelty comments started, Ms Banks understood the concern but believed there was no rationality behind it.

“The accusations people made against the foster company are really serious and are going to impact their ability to actually do their job, which is an extremely important job,” she says.

The ethics of financial gain were also questioned, as the café wasn’t a fundraiser for the fostering organisation. It could have been a win-win situation, according to Ms Banks, the kittens and foster carer both could benefit. If it was successful, she would have potentially shared some proceeds with the organisation.

“I would be the one taking the risks and doing the cleaning, looking after and feeding the cats. So, I did feel that it was fair. I also take photos of them and I might sell a calendar of cat pictures or something,” she says.

Not new to Reddit, Ms Banks knew before all this the platform was volatile, armed with a sense of justice and could have real-world impacts. She says even if the target is wrong, Reddit can be a force for good.

“I appreciate the concerns for animal safety, I happen to be very good at looking after cats, but I understand that a bunch of strangers don’t know that. It is good to know that when someone is cruel to animals if Reddit got a whiff of it, those animals would definitely be taken away within a few days.”

Still hoping to one day open a cat café with all the legal permits in place, Ms Banks says people seemed offended that she wanted to run it out of her home, so she would probably have to look for another space.

“One of my other chronic illness things is I get very sore if I sit in like a café-style chair, I need to sit on a couch. If I had another venue, it would be set up like a living room anyway because I would want to have couches there for my own benefit. It Is nicer for the cats to be able to approach you and sit next to you on a couch if they don’t want to be fully on your lap.”

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