ENTERTAINMENT
Cattyshack Cat Café hits 500 cat adoptions in just seven months. And more cats are available
Charles RunnellsFort Myers News-Press
Amelia Sheret and her family hadn’t planned to adopt two kittens. One was their limit — or so they thought.
Then they saw Cake and Margarita playing together in the cat room at Cattyshack Cat Café.
That's all it took.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, these kittens are precious!’” Sheret says and laughs. “Cake and Margarita were so stinkin’ cute.”
Now the female kittens have a brand-new “forever home” with the Sheret family in Estero. And Amelia and Matthew Sheret’s sons, ages 7 and 10, finally have pets of their own.
“The boys are just so thrilled,” Sheret says. “They’ve been begging for an animal.”
So have lots of other people in Southwest Florida, judging from the number of cats adopted at Cattyshack. Since opening in June at Gulf Coast Town Center, the café has found homes for a whopping 500 cats in its golf-themed Mulligan Room.
Read more: Lee County's first cat café, Cattyshack, opens at Gulf Coast Town Center
That’s an average of two or three cats every day.
Cake and Margarita were adoptions 499 and 500 at the café. That milestone happened Monday — months earlier than Cattyshack's owners thought it would.
“It’s all kind of surreal,” says Andrew Townsend, who co-owns the café with fiancée Amber Redfern. “It’s happened so fast. … Obviously, we’re ecstatic!”
All the cats come from Gulf Coast Humane Society, which partners with the café on the adoptions and staffs the cat room with volunteers.
Cattyshack has been a blessing for the humane society, says Brian Wierima, the society’s community relations coordinator. Especially during the avalanche of homeless kittens that happens every year from April through about October (aka “kitten season”).
“The partnership has been unbelievable,” Wierima says. “It’s definitely blown our expectations out of the water.”
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Cattyshack is Lee County’s first cat café: A place where people can go to drink coffee, eat food and watch cats — either from the café side or the separate, golf-themed cat room.
For a $15 fee, people can take their coffee and food into the room for 50 minutes and hang out with the kitties. Reservations are encouraged, since the room is often fully booked all day — especially on weekends.
The Sheret family didn’t know Cattyshack existed until they visited the humane society and were told about the place. “I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Sheret says and laughs.
They went to check it out and instantly fell in love — with both the kittens and the café.
“It’s such a lovely little place,” Sheret says. “Clean and cute and inviting and everything. … It’s a really amazing business concept.”
The 2,100-square-foot café is divided into two rooms: The main café on one side, where people order their food and drinks; and a cat room where about 20 cats lounge and frolic on catwalks, cat furniture and a putting green shaped like a paw.
Almost everything at the Gulf Coast Town Center café has a cat theme (and a golf theme, too). There’s cat-shaped food. Coffee drinks with playful names such as The Tabby, The Tuxedo and The Cat Nap. A cat-sized golf cart with a scratch-able steering wheel. Even a bathroom sign urging visitors to “PLEASE WASH YOUR PAWS.”
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Adoption fees range from $15-$75 — all of which goes back to the humane society.
There’s no pressure, though, Redfern says. Some people just want to visit the café and spend 50 relaxing minutes with the cats. And that’s fine, too.
But for people looking for a pet, the café offers a relaxed, comfortable place to meet cats and play with them a little. Sometimes they’ll even fall asleep on your lap while you’re drinking your coffee.
“This environment really fosters a better match,” Redfern says. “People can interact with the cat and see what they’re getting into ahead of time."
“They’re not adopting a cat that they think is shy and scared, and then getting home and finding out that it’s wild and crazy, and vice versa.”
Finding homes for cats was always part of the café’s mission, Townsend says. “I’d like to think that, if we do enough adoptions, we can put a dent in the euthanasia rate. … We’re definitely contributing to it.”
So far this year, the Gulf Coast Humane Society has adopted out 1,428 cats — and 500 of them were adopted from Cattyshack, Wierima says. That’s helped ease the burden and open up space at the society for even more rescue cats — especially during kitten season.
“In the past, we ran out of room,” Wierima says. “We couldn’t take in all of those kittens.”
The new challenge: Making sure the café has plenty of cats for its customers every day. But Wierima says they’re up to that challenge.
“It really took off,” Wierima says. “Cattyshack was so busy. And we had to keep them stocked with cats. … But it’s a good problem to have.”
Townsend and Redfern say they’re happy Cake and Margarita (now renamed Halo) were able to find a new home with the Sheret family. The kittens became instant buddies when they arrived at Cattyshack in mid-December.
“Those two already kind of ran around the room together,” Townsend says. “So they got along together and did everything together.”
Now Townsend and Redfern are moving on to the next adoption. And the one after that. And the one after that.
The couple works closely with the cats in the Mulligan Room, along with their employees and volunteers. They love petting the kitties, of course, but spending time with the cats also makes them more relaxed and adoptable.
And that's what it's all about.
“We definitely baby them,” Townsend says. “Some of the cats, when they get there, they realize they’re in Disney World. Some of the others are kind of frightened and it takes them a week or two."
“But we baby them until they just start melting on everyone.”
Cattyshack Cat Café is at 9901 Gulf Coast Main St., Suite D-140, in Gulf Coast Town Center, near Outback, Sports Clips and The Cigar Bar. To learn more, call 237-2960 or visit facebook.com/CattyshackCafe or cattyshackcafe.com.
Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (Facebook), @charlesrunnells (Twitter), @crunnells1 (Instagram)