The Mrs booked our two cats, Tara and Oakley, into what seemed like a nice cat hostel before we left. We were told about how they would share a chalet and be well looked after and it would cost £15 a day. I shall not name the hostelry but suffice to say that they neglected to mention that it was VAT on top and then compulsory insurance (60p per day per cat) and then VAT on that. Oh and they charge for the day of drop off and the day of collection as well.
For providing a basic cell and 2 bowls of food a day per cat this is money for old rope. Okay the concentration camp has now had to take two calls in six days from the Mrs worrying if her “puddings” are alright. The Gauleiter says that they are and braces herself for another call next week.
But this makes me think that there is a great business opportunity out there. The most shared images on twitter and facebook are …cats. So how about this as a business plan?
I set up a cat hotel which offers not the thin prison blankets that poor Tara and Oakley were provided with before the Mrs intervened (the darlings are used to a duvet after all) but luxury rugs. We offer twice the space of a conventional hotel and all day heating not just at night-time. And we also fix a webcam in each luxury en-suite facility. And then we stream the pictures over the internet with different streams for each luxury enclosure. The owners would be told which stream their cats were on and perhaps for owners there could be a secure log in allowing them to talk to their cats on Skype? For folks like my Mrs this would be a great reassurance.
The general public would not have the Skype facility but for folks like Mu (the normal cat sitter for Oakley and Tara) this would be a dream website where they could drool over cats all day. The traffic would be enormous and I am sure that Iams, Whiskas, Pet Insurers etc. would be paying a fortune for advertising. It’s a win win, the Mrs would not bleat about paying £19.34 (inc VAT) per day for such a luxury facility and so we could make 90% gross margins at that end, while we would coin it in at the other end from our web-presence?
I have seen dafter propositions secure EIS funding, what do you all reckon, shall we band together to launch Luxurycathotel.com Ltd?