ALTHOUGH those two great Swindon mysteries are still unsolved - why was it so long before we got our own Nando’s and how come we still don’t have an Ikea? - let me throw another poser into the mix.

How long before we get our first cat cafe?

If you don’t know what a cat cafe is, let me explain, because I have been scratching around on the internet for information.

The first one was in Taiwan, but like most ideas these days, the Japanese soon got hold of it and turned it into a craze, and so far nine have opened in the UK.

Now, a cat cafe could be many things.

It could, for instance, be a cafe owned and run by cats (unlikely).

Or it could be somewhere to take your cat for a bowl of Kitty Chunks or Fishy Treats (more likely).

It could even be a place where you will find cat on the menu (meow!).

But it turns out that it’s much the same as a regular cafe, except there are lots - possibly dozens - of cats around for customers to stroke while they sip their tea.

The RSPCA have expressed some reservations about cats being cuddled to order, but the people who run cat cafes are interested in an altogether different kind of reservation, which is to say they are so popular you have to book, sometimes weeks ahead.

As the joint head of a cat-loving household myself, which contains two cats, we effectively have our own cat cafe, albeit on a smaller scale and not open to the public.

So I have to say I am in favour of the idea.

We know from experience that trying to get two cats to share the same space is not always ideal and calls for a lot of diplomacy.

But I haven’t met a cat yet that will do anything other than exactly what it wants to do.

So I don’t think we need to worry too much about cat cafe cats being put in awkward positions.

And there is a big thumbs-up for the idea because after visiting cat cafes, people are often inspired to have moggies of their own, which can only be good.

The more pet cats there are in the world, the better for everybody.

Hopefully, the experience will also lead them to choose a rescue cat from a rehoming centre.

Some cat cafes cut out the middle man altogether and offer some of their cats for adoption.

This is important, because during my research I discovered there are far more stray cats around than you might imagine.

While 7.4 million cats have found themselves lucrative and frankly cushy jobs as pets in this country, at least a million are unemployed and homeless.

The problem is much larger if you believe Cats Protection, although their figure of nine million seems unlikely.

Either they are counting the cats’ lives, not the cats themselves, or else there is a species of invisible cats roaming around our neighbourhoods.

Based on the sample of our house and our two next door neighbours, a million seems much closer to the mark.

We have two cats each, and we are all visited by what we assume to be a stray, whom we call Wellington.

He is named because a previous (now deceased) stray in the neighbourhood was called Napoleon.

So expect to see a new kind of cafe open its cat flaps in the Swindon area eventually.

Don’t ask me when, but I can probably tell you where.

I don’t know why, but I have a funny feeling that the first is going to be in Purrton.