LILY Cole left a secure job with the police and ploughed her life savings into fulfilling a dream of having a cat cafe in York.

Without any previous experience, Lily started to buy furniture while searching for a venue and finally launched The Cat's Whiskers Cat Cafe after finding the ideal property and a supportive landlord.

She left her role in the York police control room and took the plunge with her new venture in Goodramgate, embarking on a steep learning curve.

Lily has now been nominated for The Press New Business and Retail, Tourism and Leisure Business awards

Lily and her family put five months of hard work into preparing for the launch, decorating and equipping the building, setting up a website to promote the cafe and serve as a booking site.

Lily secured a licence to operate with cats, learnt about book keeping, payroll, marketing, budgets, stock control, merchandise, creating a brand, how to recruit and manage staff, how to deal with environmental health, building control and planning among other tasks.

Lily also teamed up with the Cat Rescue and Welfare Trust at Escrick to source rescue cats to live in the cafe along with her own cats.

Since opening, the cafe has enjoyed success, financially and with favourable customer feedback. The Cat's Whiskers Cat Cafe has become a 'must do' part of York's tourist offering as well as also being on the York cat trail with the arrival of the cafe's very own cat sculpture, called Hope.

Covid and the lockdowns hit hard, with ever-present overheads of looking after the animals even when the business was closed.

But the business survived and once again thriving. Covid measures included fewer customers at any one time which Lily is continuing with to create a better experience for customers, the cats and staff.

Since opening, seven of the cafe cats have been adopted to their forever home, making space for more cats from the over stretched rescue centre.

The business makes a donation to the centre each month, in addition to selling items on its behalf and having a donation box within the cafe.

The person who nominated Lily for the award said: "I honestly believe the business is a credit to the city of York; it tries to do everything right, from the way it treats it staff, to the way it cares about the customer experience and most importantly to the way it looks after its star members, the cats themselves.

"As many people have pointed out, you can clearly see that the business is run with love, by someone who loves the animals."

* Is your business in the frame for a Press Business Award? Enter before the deadline on August 15 at www.yorkpress.co.uk/business/awards