“Truly, just come to my living room, I’ve got cats who live here.” That is the idea behind Catzen Coffee, which opened on Grand Avenue on Jan. 1. Vanessa Beardsley, the owner, wants the cafe to become “an absolute necessity” for the neighborhood. The cafe aspires to give back to the community that originally inspired it — years ago, two young Mac students left a note on Beardsley’s fence asking if they could play with her family’s pets. It struck her that there were so many people like those students: stressed, far from home, and in need of a comfortable place to relax. And also in need of better coffee. So, she set out to build Catzen Coffee, with its specialty coffee shop, a space called “The Living Room”, where patrons can interact with the cats, and “The Lab”, where coffee-focused classes are held.
This past November, Beardsley gave me a tour of the gutted interior of the building at 1416 Grand Avenue, which the café now resides in. The building was constructed in 1934 as a drug and seed store on the outskirts of Saint Paul. The renovated space now features a coffee counter, an event space with a dry bar and a patio with two cat-themed murals by Ara Elizabeth, a Saint Paul artist. Of course, there is also the cat room, which includes a chute that goes down to the basement should the cats want to be in a quieter space without humans.
Beardsley reminisced about the earlier phase of construction during the summer when she spent much of her time in the building with the eight cats that now reside in the shop. She explained how a group of young boys had stopped by one day and became fast friends of hers, often returning on their bikes to play with the cats. On the exposed drywall, they had scrawled on a picture of a spider, with an outline of a paw next to it labeled “paws here” – instructions for the cats. Beardsley remarked that, even once painted over, the drawing “would be a part of the cafe forever,” underneath the surface.
Beardsley wants the cats themselves to become fixtures of the community. To accomplish this, she is pushing a cat-centric approach. In a departure from many American cat cafes, the cats will be permanent residents of the building, rather than being up for adoption. The idea is that having cats who are not surrounded by other, unfamiliar cats, and who are used to roaming groups of humans entering their space every hour, will make for a better experience for both the cats and the humans.
The only other cat cafe currently in operation in the Twin Cities metro area (at two locations in Roseville and New Hope, Minnesota) is the Cafe Meow, an adoption-based cat cafe. There, customers are shuffled through on an hourly basis (at $10.50 per person) to interact with the cats, all of which are up for adoption. On one Sunday in November at the Roseville location, about 10 people crowded through the dual-door entryway that aimed to prevent cats from escaping.
There, I observed cats who hardly budged from the few cat apartments and cubbies removed from humans. For much of the hour spent with the cats, patrons (including several children) dangled toys in front of felines who either holed up in cat apartments or were fast asleep.
Cafe Meow typifies the adoption-based cat cafe, which is the model American establishments typically follow. Because of local health and safety regulations, most American cat cafes must house cats in a separate room from where food and beverages are served (although customers usually may bring purchased items into the cat area). Other cat cafes, especially in Asian countries like Taiwan and Japan, where the phenomenon started, make no such distinction between areas. In addition to being allowed to roam, cats in these cafes are not usually up for adoption, so they stay in one place, with the same cats (and often the same clientele) to keep them company.
Cat cafes, especially those that put their cats up for adoption, have their opponents. Cats Protection, a UK charity devoted to animal welfare, opposes cat cafes due to “the risks of stress, disease transmission and poor welfare for cats.” Cat Protection’s website points to continually changing groups of humans being stressful for cats. A rolling population of rescue cats in adoption-based cafes (something Beardsley describes as “the churn of cats”) compounds this problem and can lead to the transmission of diseases between cats. The charity website goes on to claim that the cats in these cafes are “exploited as a gimmick to sell coffee.”
To be clear, Beardsley did not disavow adoption-based cafes. She noted that many adoption agencies in the Twin Cities area do good work, and there was no need for another one. Still, Catzen will deliberately be more like cafes in Asia. Catzen’s eight cats live full-time in the cafe. These cats include Halloween Blizzard of ‘91 (Holly for short), Tim the Enchanter and LEEROY JENKINS! — profiles of whom can be found on the Catzen website and placards in the cafe.
The cats were adopted last March. Beardsley joked that whenever her business partner, Francis, went out of town, she would comb rescues and breeders for another suitable cat. During the summer, the cats resided in the building on Grand, bonding with each other and familiarizing themselves with the building. Later, while the cafe was under construction, the felines had an AirBnB all to themselves just down the road, rented on their behalf so that they could stay comfortable and together.
Although the intention was to wait until the cafe was open to start adopting cats (something Beardsley called “insane” in retrospect), the early adoptions turned out to be necessary. Many of the cats needed time to adjust to their new environment. One cat in particular, Big Joe, was extremely sick and underweight when adopted – and after two eye surgeries, he sequestered himself into his llama-shaped cat box and refused to come out. That is when Beardsley called the Reiki lady.
Reiki is a form of energy healing originating in Japan. It is considered pseudoscientific by the medical establishment, and Beardsley herself had her doubts. But minutes after the Reiki practitioner left, Big Joe emerged from his beloved llama, something that Beardsley “doesn’t know how else to explain.”
Between the AirBnB, the Reiki healing and the cat profiles, the care given to the Catzen cats is perhaps uncommon. But what Beardsley wants to do is not like a typical cat cafe
“I really just had a vision of something completely like the living room where I grew up,” Beardsley said. “It was just comfy and there were lots of books, and you could just hang out. You didn’t have to do anything. And there wasn’t a lot of music and you didn’t have to drink. That’s where I would want to go.”
Will Catzen be a better environment for felines than other cat cafes? Beardsley certainly hopes so. Her other goal, however, is to lift up the neighborhood and the community through a shared love of cats and coffee.
