The UK’s longest running cat cafe is re-opening in a new south east London location – after a successful community crowdfunding campaign to save the business.
Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium will open its doors again to the public on April 11 on King Williams Walk in Greenwich, close to Cutty Sark and Greenwich Park.
The cat cafe originally opened in Bethnal Green in 2014 and served customers for 11 years, but was forced to close in June 2025 after running into unmanageable debt and increased operational costs post-pandemic.
Freyja Hides-Westwood, managing director of Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, said: “The former landlord increased the rent and then decided to backdate it in line with the annual rent review. Overnight this put us in around £30,000 worth of debt. It was impossible to run.”
Shortly after the cafe officially closed down, Hides-Westwood and her team started the crowdfunder. She said the response to the campaign was “incredible” and customers were “so ready to donate to help to save the cafe”.
“I genuinely didn’t think we would make it,” said Hides-Westwood. “We had a target of raising £50,000 through donations and we reached that within a month of the Crowdfunder going live.
“We ended up raising £55,000 in total and an investor put in the rest of the money we needed to buy the business and re-open in Greenwich.”
The decision to relocate to Greenwich seemed natural.
“I live in Charlton and our investor lives in Blackheath,” said Hides-Westwood (below).
“I remember walking through the area and being amazed at how busy it was. I kept thinking this would be the perfect place for a cat cafe. It now feels like Lady Dinah’s is a business for the community.”
The new cafe will have greater outdoor space for the cats to enjoy and improvements have been made to the food selection with all food being baked and prepared onsite. There will also be more space to support cat rescues and rehoming schemes onsite.
The managing director is confident this new iteration of Lady Dinah’s will be as big a success as it was in Bethnal Green.
She said: “With all the things we plan to do it will give us greater streams of revenue. We’re thinking of offering a reduced ‘cuddle time’ service on our closed days where customers can come and just play with the cats for 30 minutes. There are so many options!”
Residents in the area are excited too with people uploading photos of the cafe as it takes shape across social media and in local Greenwich community groups. The local council has also been supportive of the business.
Donors to the Crowdfunder were given exclusive early access to the cafe and were able to see the new space and meet some of the cats last month.
“The soft-opening went really well. The cats responded brilliantly to the people and their new surroundings. They were able to find their flow pretty quickly,” she said.
Cat cafes sometimes get a bad reputation with critics expressing concern about the care of the cats and how they’re treated in such an environment.
But Hides-Westwood added: “It’s important for people to know we’ve been doing this for 11 years prior. Our team is professionally qualified and experienced in animal care. We have a full cat-care team and they are getting the absolute best care possible and that’s our main priority.
“Everyone seems really happy that we’ve managed to come back and this time in Greenwich. All we want is to bring back the Lady Dinah’s that everyone knew and loved.”
All images: Yusuf Tamanna
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