Work had been full-on that week, non-stop meetings, and by Friday I just wanted to sit somewhere quiet with an animal that didn’t want anything from me. I’d looked up cat cafés in Brisbane a couple of times before but never actually found one on the southside. Then a friend mentioned one in Sunnybank, and it turned out I’d walked past it loads of times without clocking what it was.
So that’s how I ended up at EggYolk Cat Lounge & Pet Grooming. I only meant to stay half an hour. Ended up there for two.
What’s Actually Inside
There’s about a dozen cats in there, mostly big soft ones who couldn’t care less what you do to them. You can sit next to them, pat them, talk nonsense at them, and they just sort of put up with it. A couple of them decided I was fine and plonked themselves next to me for ages, which honestly felt pretty good after the week I’d had.
The kittens are the opposite story. Hand them a wand toy or roll a ball across the floor and they’re airborne, all elbows and enthusiasm. One of the younger ones had a bit of an edge to her — not unfriendly exactly, just clearly running the place — but she was the exception. Everyone else was happy to be fussed over by whoever wandered past.
There are drinks, plus a small range of cat treats and toys if you want to buy something to hand-feed or play with while you’re there. It’s a nice way to build a bit more interaction into the visit rather than just watching cats nap, which, fair warning, some of them will do for a solid chunk of your booking. That’s cats for you.
Getting In the Door
Bookings are more or less essential, especially on weekends. When I checked, plenty of Saturday and Sunday slots were already full, and there was no charge for reserving a spot — you pay when you arrive. A two-hour session ran around $15, though cafés like this tend to adjust pricing and packages over time, so it’s worth confirming the current rate and booking link directly with EggYolk before you plan around it. The same goes for hours, minimum age policies, and whether children need to be accompanied — cat cafés vary a lot on this, and it’s the kind of detail you want locked in before you drive out to Sunnybank with the kids expecting to walk straight in.
EggYolk is on the southside in Sunnybank, an area better known for its enormous spread of Asian restaurants and grocers than for animal cafés, which makes this one feel a bit like a find rather than something you’d stumble into by accident.
Why the Name Changed
The café used to trade as PKP Cat Café & Grooming before rebranding to EggYolk Cat Lounge & Pet Grooming. According to the business, the new name comes from one of their own cats, a former resident of the café’s colony who was much loved by regular visitors before she passed. Naming the rebrand after her was less about a catchy new logo and more about keeping her as part of the story the café tells about itself. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of thing that tells you the cats here are treated as more than décor.
Is It Worth the Trip
Cat cafés work on a simple idea: most of us don’t have the space, time, or landlord approval for a cat of our own, but we still want the company of one occasionally, and a supervised café is a low-commitment way to get it. The concept, where visitors pay a fee to spend time with resident cats, first appeared in Taipei in the late 1990s before spreading through Japan and eventually the rest of the world. Brisbane’s version of that is still fairly small, so a genuinely relaxed one on the southside is worth knowing about if you’re local, or worth building into a day out if you’re not.
If you’re planning around it, two hours is a good amount of time to actually settle in rather than rush a cuddle and leave. Go in expecting some cats to ignore you completely and others to adopt you as a heated cushion, and you’ll have a good time either way.
Planning a Southside Day Out
If you’re building a longer day around Sunnybank, it’s worth checking the current Queensland school holiday and term dates before you go, since weekday bookings tend to open up outside of school holiday periods. For more ideas on filling a day out with kids on the southside or elsewhere in Brisbane, our things to do with kids directory is worth a browse, and our activities category has a running list of spots we’ve actually visited and written up ourselves.
A stressful week doesn’t need a big fix. Sometimes it just needs a room full of cats who don’t care what’s in your inbox.