If you’ve been following our updates, you know that we attended the Los Angeles Feline Film Festival. Many other cities have held feline film festivals, and with one coming to Southern California, I decided that The Cat Cafe needed to make an appearance.

It made for a long day. I left early on Sunday morning and drove from San Diego to Los Angeles.  Los Angeles is known for horrible traffic, but on this day, it was smooth sailing.

It didn’t take long to set up the booth for The Cat Cafe. Given that we are a coffee shop and animal adoption facility, it’s not really possible to bring that to the event. So I set up a couple of signs, some postcards, and got ready to do explain the concept to people attending the event.

There were thousands of cat enthusiasts at the event, all happy to hear about how The Cat Cafe will feature locally roasted coffee and how we will have adoptable animals from the San Diego Humane Society available for people to play with if they want to. They loved the message, especially the part about how I want to highlight special needs cats where possible. The goal is to find cats homes, but also to educate people on how special needs cats can be loving companions for the right person.

While I was busy working from before the gates opened at 1 PM until the screening of the films, I still found time to have some fun and to get a picture of one of the celebrity cats in attendance. Tara Hero Cat sure seems to be relaxed and enjoying herself.

I also collected more than 100 emails from people who were interested in getting updates on what’s happening, and I gave away hundreds of cards with information about The Cat Cafe.

It’s been a busy week here so far, and I’ll have more updates for you later on what’s happening. We are definitely moving things along!

One of the questions that I get from people is when the shirts and mugs they were scheduled to get as part of The Cat Cafe’s crowd funding campaign will arrive. I know that initially, I planned on having those to you by June but that was with an opening date of July. As you are all very aware of, due to the typical delays with paperwork and bureaucratic processes, which were exacerbated due to this being a new concept that hasn’t been done anywhere in the United States, that goal was not met.

But as we get closer to a date where we will open — I’ll have some news on that soon — it became time to order merchandise for The Cat Cafe.

And so I did it. I put an order in for t-shirts, travel mugs, and coffee mugs. The vendors I spoke with said that I should receive these soon. In fact, I just received notification that the shipment of travel mugs and t-shirts is on its way right now. They’re projected to arrive next Tuesday, and you better believe that I’ll be sending out The Cat Cafe t-shirts right after they do.

Given that I’m not a designer, I think this isn’t half bad! I wanted it to be a simple, clean design that anyone could wear.

And if there’s enough demand for it, I’ll also make tank tops for women. But for now, it’s going to be t-shirts. I’ve got unisex sizes ranging from small to extra large.

I didn’t offer travel mugs during the crowd funding campaign, but I figure you’d like to see what those look like as well. Again, given that I’m not a designer, I think these turned out well. I’d definitely be willing to drink coffee out of these in my car.

I don’t have a good mockup of the ceramic mug that some of you will be getting because instead of just putting the image on one side, I have it wrapped around the entire mug. That’s something both you and I will have to wait to see.

I know what the next question will be. I didn’t get one during the crowd funding campaign. Will it be possible to order these?

The answer to that is yes. I’ll be setting up an e-commerce platform soon, and you will be able to get the regular mug for $10, the travel mug for $15, and the t-shirts for $15.

Or you can wait until we open and purchase one of the mugs. If you do that, you will receive a free 12 ounce drink of your choice. And, when you come back, you’ll receive $0.25 off the purchase of any drinks because we want to encourage you to reduce the amount of waste we create.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me.

Thanks for being a supporter of The Cat Cafe!

I’ve got some very exciting news to share with you today. The Cat Cafe will be exhibiting at the LA Feline Film Festival.

This is a really cool opportunity to introduce the concept of a cat cafe to as many as 10,000 people in the Southern California area. We’ll be at one of the exhibitor tables, and we’ll be giving out information about where we’re located and what we’ll be offering to customers.

The festival will run from 1:00 PM until 10:00 PM on Sunday, September 21. It will be held on Christmas Tree Drive at the Los Angeles Exposition Center.

That video was filmed at the Feline Film Festival that took place last year in Minnesota.

As much as I’d like to say that The Cat Cafe will be one of the big draws to the event, that’s just not true. There will be three celebrity cats — celebricats? — at the event. From 1:00 to 1:45 PM, Dusty the Klepto Cat will be in the celebrity cat tent. Make sure that everything you have with you is secured, because Dusty gained notoriety for stealing all sorts of things from his neighborhood.

After Dusty leaves the stage, one cat whose actions helped save a child will take his place. Tara, Hero Cat, will be in the celebrity cat tent from 2:00 until 4:00 PM.

When Tara is done with her turn in the spotlight, Lil Bub will stroll on. She’ll be there from 5:00 until 7:00 PM.

Besides the celebrity cats, there will be a full day of events and seminars where people talk about their experiences in creating interesting cat videos. Entertainers of the two legged variety will also take the stage.

It will be a fun day for everyone involved. I definitely recommend that anyone in the Southern California area stop by to visit. If you do, please come by our booth and say hello. I’d love to meet you in person!

Remember how I told you that I am confident that there is a market for The Cat Cafe because of the reception they’ve had in London and Paris and because of the long waits they’ve seen? Now I don’t have to tell people about cat cafes in Europe and Asia. I can point to one in Canada.

North America’s first permanent cat cafe, Le Cafe des Chats, opened Montreal this past weekend and I think it’s safe to say that the opening was a huge success. One visitor had to wait in line for 40 minutes in order to get in. Staff said this was necessary in order to avoid stressing the cats on the first day of operations.

Another visitor said that the scene was borderline chaos and added “the cats were the most civilized out of everyone.”

The eight cats present seemed to handle the craziness on opening day in stride. There is one major difference between the operations of The Cat Cafe and Le Cafe des Chats, besides the language. While we both will work with animal rescue groups to find cats who are well suited to the environment, The Cat Cafe will feature cats who can be adopted. Le Cafe des Chats will not. Instead, their cats will be ambassadors and will be permanent residents.

It’s great to see the kind of reaction to this cat cafe. While you never really know until you do it yourself, seeing other cat cafes seeing such high initial demand is definitely reassuring.