Small groups · old towns · one ginger cat
It started with a cat on a doorstep
Mitty arrived on the front step of a townhouse in Litomyšl one wet October, a ginger tom with one torn ear and a firm view that the step was his. The people who lived there fed him, named him and, within a year, found that every guest who came through the door asked about him before they asked about the town.
That was the idea, more or less. A tour does not have to be a schedule; it can be a way of paying attention. The people who started Cat Mitty were travellers who had spent too many holidays on coaches with forty strangers, and they wanted trips that felt like visiting a friend who happens to know the best bakery in every town.
The first group was five people and one minibus. They went to Istanbul, came back with sore feet and a list of cats they had met, and asked when the next one left. The tally is still kept: a notebook at the front desk holds the cats of every trip, name or description, with a small tick when a cat came back for seconds.
Why only eight
A table for eight fits in nearly every back room we have ever eaten in. It also fits in one minibus, one boat and one conversation, and nobody is a stranger by the end of day two.
How we work
The route is a ribbon
Every tour is a string of days with enough slack to bend. If a harbour is lovely and a museum is closed, the guide takes the harbour and tells you about the museum over lunch.
Local people do the cooking
We eat in family places and sleep in small houses with a name on the door, because that is where the stories sit. The cats there have been briefed.
We come home to the square
Every tour begins and ends at Cat Mitty Hotel in Litomyšl. There is a room for the night before, a coffee for the morning after, and a chair by the window to compare notes.