Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, and if the rock had WiFi you’d still know this, you’ve seen people participating in the ice bucket challenge to help raise money for ALS research. 

Well, The Cat Cafe couldn’t pass up an opportunity to do some good — I like helping my fellow humans as much as I do helping cats — so I decided to join in.

As you’re well aware, here in California, we are suffering from a severe drought. Many have criticized ice bucket challenge participants for wasting water. The California Water Board recently released a statement saying that participants in the challenge are not violating water restrictions.

But we here in San Diego have another source of water that we can use, which definitely cannot be used as drinking water. It’s called the Pacific Ocean. And while water from the Pacific is cold, it’s not as cold as it gets when ice from water captured during a shower is used to chill it more.

So there you have it, folks. The Cat Cafe’s ice bucket challenge has been issued. And we did it with a SoCal twist.

Oh, by the way. Yes, the water was cold. No, even a moisture wicking shirt could not keep me from getting wet. And the unexpected side effect of dumping sea water on yourself is that you get seaweed and sand all over you.

But it was all in good fun, and as you can see from the video, the management of the planned cat cafes in Cincinnati, New York, and Toronto now must participate.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did making it!

I’ve got some great news. After much negotiation and visiting the site multiple times to make sure that it worked and we can make sure that the facilities will work with all of the modifications that are needed, the lease for The Cat Cafe has been approved!

This means we can move forward with a number of things. First, we can move forward with the submission of plans for the renovation that’s needed. In order to make sure that our plans comply with city code, we need to have them drawn by a professional draftsman — that’s not me. As the person who is doing the drawing said, you’re good at coming up with the plan for The Cat Cafe and the design you want to put in. I’m good at putting it on paper.

Second, it means that we can move forward with the construction of the coffee cart. That’s something we’ve had to hold off on until we were sure the space was secured. Now that we have the space, and we can do the renovations, we can move forward on that.

I can only guess what you are thinking. “That’s great! But when will you open? You were talking about opening July 1 and we really wanted to make sure we visited. Now when is your opening date?”

One of the things you have to do when you operate a business is learn from your mistakes. The Cat Cafe — okay, I — made a mistake when I gave a specific date for opening. As much as I wanted to make that date, I underestimated the time and effort needed to get a new concept approved by the appropriate regulatory agencies.

I won’t make that mistake again. Instead of giving you a specific date for the opening of The Cat Cafe, I will just say that the new projected opening date is in the fall of 2014. That may mean that The Cat Cafe may not be the first one in the United States, but that’s not what’s important. What is important is making sure it’s done right and we help save adoptable cats.

Thanks for all your support and patience. I can’t wait to welcome you to The Cat Cafe.

Hi, everyone! I wanted to share some news with you. The Cat Cafe had a space identified from the very beginning, but I didn’t want to sign the lease until I was sure that the San Diego County Health Department would sign off on the concept. I had a couple of meetings with them in order to:

• Explain the concept of a cat cafe to them
• Make sure that the separation of the cats from the area where the food and beverages are served meets the requirements of the health code

Not surprisingly, their initial reaction was to say no. But after explaining the concept and stressing that the animals will be completely separated from the area where food and beverages will be served, I got the okay.  It took multiple revisions to the plans. I guess that’s what should be expected when you’re introducing a new concept to regulators and they want to make sure that your idea complies with all the regulations.

But now that this is complete, I’ve gone ahead and signed the lease. I’m confident it will be approved and then I can count down the days until I move in, and start the build out process.

The Cat Cafe doesn’t get this far without your support and help.

That’s why I want to give all of our supporters a big thank you.

Hey, everyone.  It’s been a while since we updated you but we’ve got a number of things going on.  First, the crowd funding campaign for The Cat Cafe got a big surprise when someone offered to match contributions dollar for dollar up to $5,000.

I’ve often said that this is like a public broadcasting fundraising campaign, and now it’s even more like one.  You hear them talk about how there’s a dollar for dollar match, and The Cat Cafe is no different.

Please become a contributor and your donation is doubled.  Think about all the good you can do and how you can help save cats with your contribution.

No amount is too small, so please visit The Cat Cafe’s Indiegogo campaign and contribute.

Second, we got that piece of paper from the State of California.  As much as I’d like to just run the business under my own name, that’s just not a possibility these days.  There are too many risks associated with opening a business, and that’s why people opening them need to form a limited liability corporation or incorporate.

I chose to go with the LLC route, and I sent the paperwork in to the State of California about a week ago.  They’ve entered my LLC into their database, and I’m waiting for the document that makes everything official.

That piece of paper with the State of California is what allowed me to take the next step, which is to get the lease paperwork done.  Without the LLC, there would have been too much at risk.  All the paperwork for this business needs to be done through the LLC.

And so I’ve asked the owner of the property that I’ll be leasing to put together a two year lease, with an option to extend the lease for another five years.

Exciting things are happening for The Cat Cafe, but it all comes back to getting the funding.  Please become a contributor today!

A little more press for you, this time from Zagat’s local edition.  It’s so good to see more information sources writing about us.  I just wish they would be more like the people at Eater, who not only pulled information from the NBC San Diego write up but also called to ask questions and learn more.