Peter Jones’ central London coffee shop in Sloane Square is offering up a new and rare pick-me-up, perhaps to counter the depressing feelings one might get from reading about all the riots caused by the global food shortage.

This upscale, $100 cup of coffee, an exclusive blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the Kupi Luwak bean, is harvested from a cat’s ass. Not just any cat, mind you — a palm civet. This Indonesian creature is a cross between a cat and a monkey. That makes it all better.

The civets eat the beans, but can’t digest them. They can only digest the fruit pulp of the soft coffee cherries. The beans themselves are deposited on the forest floor. From here they are pulled from the cat’s dung by entrepreneurial plantation workers who know just how pretentious and gullible some westerners are; enough so to pay for and drink something my teenage daughter has dubbed “Catpooccino.” She further suggested the word be pronounced with a French accent, “making it more marketable in the United States.”

Peter Jones boasts that proceeds from the sale of the brew are going to a cancer charity. Wouldn’t something in the gastrointestinal disease arena be more appropriate?

More incredulous than the jutted java are the comments made by some of those all too willing to part ways with their money.

I was a little apprehensive before I tried it but I actually really liked it. It was very earthy and it tastes very smooth.

It is a delicacy so I can definitely see someone wanting to pay £50 for this, perhaps for a present.

"We wanted to give our customers a really special experience," a Peter Jones’ spokesman was heard to say. Indeed you have. Next on the menu: thé Pee féline (cat pee tea).

Cheers!