About Us
Welcome to our small but mighty cat café!
Our aim has always been to create more than just a nice place to sip a coffee – we wanted to build a little haven where people could slow down and focus on the warmth and connection that comes with finding a countryside café that really speaks to you.
Here you’ll find a cosy corner to escape the rush of the outside world, connect with others in the community, and experience the soothing companionship of a cat.
​Our Story
A Note From The Owner
Hi there!
I'm Scarlett - the founder of Puss In Books
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I have always deeply admired business owners and entrepreneurs for their tenacity, but when I was younger it was never part of my plan to be a business owner myself. The motivation behind how Puss In Books came to be is actually deeply personal and sometimes quite difficult to talk about.
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As a teenager, I struggled with severe depression.
For the most part, I tried to deal with it on my own because that's the way depression works - it makes you think you're alone, that everything is on your shoulders.
I knew I wasn't well; my weight had dropped to a BMI of 15 and I was engaging in increasingly reckless behaviour. But I thought that as long as I finished my A-Levels that everything would be okay, it would be worth all the hard work and suffering.
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But you don't get to choose with mental illness. I couldn't just 'hold on' until my exams were over. You can't schedule a breakdown.
And so I ended up having to leave school without completing my A-Levels, and therefore being unable to join any of the universities I had applied to.
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Instead, I stayed in hospital.
I was already depressed, but now the last hope I had for the possible future I was envisioning for myself had been taken from me. If I wasn't ready to give up before, I was now.
During this time doctors attempted to encourage me to find something to work towards, a new future.
I needed something that would give me purpose and motivation to keep going. Somehow, that idea became a cat café.
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From the age of 18, I slowly started building towards this goal.
What began as a coping mechanism, an empty promise that even I didn't fully believe in at the start, eventually became something that genuinely helped pull me through the darkest periods of my life.
Over the last ten years I have nurtured the concept of Puss In Books, moulding it into everything I wanted it to become.
Over time my mental health slowly improved and Puss In Books became my purpose, as well as a symbol of my own recovery.
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And now it is here, in all its wonky and imperfect glory!
So thank you for coming along with me on this crazy journey and I hope you get everything you have been seeking out of Puss In Books!
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Love,
Scarlett
