There was a bit of a craze for cat cafes in England a few years ago, the concept borrowed from the home of the laser-focused theme restaurant, Japan.

The mania seems to have cooled, and here’s hoping all those cats are still being well looked after and are getting a decent number of treats. The best ones, like the Kitty Cafe in Nottingham, were always about rehoming cats first and providing cute instagram opportunities for anime nerds second.

The Bag Of Nails is not a cat cafe. It is a pub, that just happens to be overrun with cats. That, at least, is the vibe it exudes: that a dozen or so felines turned up en masse one day, decided to stay, and the staff were too afraid to do anything about it.

Usual pub operations happen around the cats; there are no cutesy cat toys or cat trees or other cat-pandering paraphernalia. There are some boxes that may once have contained crisps, that the cats have claimed as beds, and that’s about it.

Behind the bar are many drawings of the cats by visitors, and useful hand-written signs like “Don’t pick up the fucking cats”.

My associate, a regular, told me the names and personalities of all the cats, most of which I have already forgotten. We drank and talked across a table dominated by Rasputin. He was not the lover of the Russian queen, but instead large tabby which was fast asleep for most of our visit, before vomiting unceremoniously on the floor.

There was a cat that really was gone.

I love this pub, and hope to return again one day when I am in the mood for something stronger than a lime and soda.