The Cat Cafe has never stepped into politics before. We are happy to welcome you if you are planning on voting for the candidate from the American independent, democratic, green, libertarian, peace and freedom, or republican party. We don’t care about your politics as long as you’re looking to enjoy good coffee with friendly cats.

However, we are breaking this silence to urge you to vote no on Proposition 65.

The proponents of Proposition 65 tell you that when businesses like The Cat Cafe charge $0.10 per bag for a paper bag, we’ll get a “windfall.” They say that we’ll be getting a “sweetheart deal” from Sacramento. In addition, they say retailers like us “get $300 million richer while shoppers get $300 million poorer.” Retailers like us can’t keep this “windfall,” they say. Make us send it to the California Wildlife Conservation Board instead.

It’s a compelling story. But when you take a closer look at it, their claims fall apart.

We’ll use The Cat Cafe as an example. The plastic bags we give to customers when they purchase gift items cost us about a penny per bag. We look at this as a cost of doing business. We sell you a t-shirt, mug, or other gift item, and you get a bag to carry it in if you want. And many of you don’t use one.

If single use plastic bags are banned, then we must charge $0.10 a bag for those who opt to use one. However, these bags cost approximately $0.15 per bag. So instead of the “windfall” proponents of Proposition 65 claim we’re going to get, we’re going to lose a nickel per bag. Looking at it another way, our “windfall” is a quintupling of our cost.

The Cat Cafe will accept that as a cost of doing business in a more environmentally friendly way. But we’re extremely disappointed that proponents of Proposition 65 would portray this as some kind of “windfall” for us. And that is why we’re urging you to vote against Proposition 65.

We’re happy to discuss this with you further. Please email us if you have any questions.  And thanks for all of your support!

We’ve had quite a few adoptions here at The Cat Cafe, which means we kept our partner San Diego Humane Society busy. After Dean and Deluca got us to our 200 adoption milestone, we sent home long term resident Sammy as well as Cora and Noah.

San Diego Humane Society worked hard to find us cats to replace the ones who went home. And they brought us five really cool cats, who we’ll introduce you to here.

Calvin is a very friendly seven year old, 12 pound cat. He loves to interact with people, and started exploring the playpen almost immediately upon his arrival here at The Cat Cafe. He enjoys being pet by customers of all ages, and he doesn’t mind getting a little attention when he’s sleeping. Because Calvin has a cold, we’ve cleaned his face a few times. He doesn’t fuss too much when we do this.

Sunflower is only a little over a year, but he’s had a rough life. He was born to a semi-feral colony near a warehouse, and he was suffering from a condition known as entropion. After arriving at San Diego Humane Society, the doctors operated on his eye and it’s a lot better now. It is always going to look a little off, but don’t let that keep you from checking out this eight pound boy. He is very friendly and inquisitive and loves to play with wand toys.

Yoshi was surrendered from the only home she’s known. Nine years ago, when she was a kitten, her adopters took her home. But then they had children, and the children don’t interact properly with Yoshi. Since arriving at The Cat Cafe, this 14 pound tortie has shown that she loves interacting with children who can be respectful of her. She even accepted kisses from a three year old boy!

Finally, we have the bonded pair of Raja and Tibby. They are one of the first cats that San Diego Humane Society has brought to us from their Oceanside campus, and they’re definitely great representatives of that campus. These two must go home together because they are bonded. Sadly, these two lost their home when their people could no longer properly take care of them.

Raja is a sleek house panther who will definitely grab your attention. He’s 12 years old and weighs 15 pounds. And he loves to give head bonks to people he just met. He was out of the carrier in less than a minute when he arrived. And he was out interacting with customers after less than a day here at The Cat Cafe.

His sister Tibby is also 12 years old, and she’s the same size as Raja, weighing 15 pounds. She’s not as active as Raja is, but she’s also very affectionate and loving. After just one day at The Cat Cafe, she was hopping into customer’s laps and purring up a storm.

Please come by and meet the latest arrivals at The Cat Cafe. And don’t forget, we are still working on raising the capital we need to build a sidewalk seating area. We are less than $1,000 from meeting our goal! If you can contribute, please do. And if you can’t please share our campaign.

When we opened The Cat Cafe in January 2015, we were hoping to send one cat per week to a good home. If we did this, we knew we’d be helping San Diego Humane Society fulfill its commitment in the Getting to Zero initiative. This initiative spares every adoptable or treatable animal from euthanasia.

We were really excited when we reached 100 adoptions last year, with the adoption of a very active house panther named Atticus. And we’re just as excited today. When the active and playful brothers Dean and Deluca went home, we reached the 200 adoptions mark!

Dean and Deluca arrived at The Cat Cafe about a month ago, and quickly became favorites of both the staff and visitors. Their playful antics entertained everyone. The staff loved how these two would follow them everywhere when customers weren’t present. And while cats do sleep anywhere from 14-18 hours per day, when these brothers weren’t sleeping, they were playing.

These two are really nice cats, too. No cat likes to go into a crate. These two were purring even though they tried to keep from going into the crates!

In order to celebrate our 200th adoption, we’re dropping the price on all of our pastries to $2.00 for today. Our pastries are always a nice add on, and they’re reasonably priced without the discount. This discount makes them an even better add on to your drink.

Also, after learning that we reached 200 adoptions, one of our supporters decided to contribute $200 to our crowdfunding campaign to build out a sidewalk cafe! That will take us close to $4,000, which means that we’re getting really close to our goal.

If you haven’t contributed already, please do so. And if you can’t contribute right now, please share our crowdfunding campaign so that others can.

Please come visit The Cat Cafe today. Enjoy your drink and a $2 pastry, and help us celebrate reaching 200 adoptions!

In September, things tend to slow down a little. The summer travel season ends, and people head back to work and to school. But we were busy here at The Cat Cafe. We sent eight cats to good homes in September. In addition to sending these cats to their new homes, The Cat Cafe is happy to have raised $255 for San Diego Humane Society in September.

We’re happy with the results we saw in September. We knew that the amount of visitors we saw would drop quite a bit because of the end of the summer travel season. Still, we were able to adopt out an average of two cats a week and raise a decent amount of money to help San Diego Humane Society carry out their mission of helping animals.

We’re also pleased with the results of our fundraising campaign for a sidewalk cafe. We’ve raised 50 percent of the funds we need to build out the sidewalk cafe the way we want in just a couple of weeks! We still aren’t at our goal, and we’re still asking patrons to contribute. Every little bit helps, so please contribute and share our campaign.

You’ll remember we shifted our focus at The Cat Cafe from the total number of cats to making sure we have interactive ones. Doing this seems to have had a positive effect. Right now, we have 11 cats in residence at The Cat Cafe. And all but one of them spends the majority of its time out in the playpen. That means in addition to enjoying your award winning coffee drink, you are much more likely to be able to make a furry friend.

We’ll continue to make improvements here at The Cat Cafe to enhance your experience. We always welcome your feedback. Please visit us, enjoy a good cup of coffee and spend time with our clowder!

We had three cats recently join us here at The Cat Cafe, and we’ll introduce you to them soon. Before we do that, we want to make sure that we give you more details on our plans to put in a sidewalk cafe.

For most of our first year, we were able to get by with just the seating that we provided right next to the building. Those six seats were sufficient for not just those who wanted to sit outside while their friends enjoyed the cats, but to handle most of the overflow when we reached capacity. However, as the number of people visiting us has grown, those seats are no longer sufficient. And that’s why we’re adding a sidewalk seating area here at The Cat Cafe.

We are like most small businesses. Capital expenses like this put a big strain on our cash flow. But it’s something we know we need at The Cat Cafe, and so it’s something we want to move forward with. And that is why we are asking for your help. We’ve set up a campaign so that our supporters can help with this. Please contribute what you can. Any amount helps, and if you can’t contribute please share our campaign.

When this campaign succeeds and the construction is complete, we’re going to have a nice, attractive area for you. You’ll be able to enjoy the San Diego weather before heading in to play with the cats.

Now on to the cats. We had three new arrivals to The Cat Cafe over the past few days. Say hello to Avatar, Lily, and Marshall.

Avatar is a small kitty, and that’s why people are so surprised when we tell them that she gave birth to a litter of kittens. But yes, this 7.4 pound girl, who is about a year and two months old, did just that. After she raised her kittens to the point where they could be adopted, she was brought to The Cat Cafe to find a home of her own. She’s a friendly girl and you’ll likely see her wandering on by you to say hi.

Lily was adopted with her brother Marshall from San Diego Humane Society about four years ago. Unfortunately for her, her people moved to a place where cats are not permitted. That meant she made the trip back to San Diego Humane Society, and then made the short trip to The Cat Cafe. She’s the smaller of the two siblings, weighing 12 pounds. And this four year old has a very unique and endearing trait. She’s got a heart on her nose.

Marshall is a lot bigger than his sister, tipping the scales at 22 pounds. He’s going to have to go to a home where he gets the help he needs to lose some weight. We know that fat cats are cute, but they’re also prone to the same diseases that obese people are.

Please support us in building the sidewalk cafe and come in to say hello to the three newest members of the clowder here at The Cat Cafe!

As our partnership with San Diego Humane Society continues to evolve, you will notice some changes at The Cat Cafe. Many of them are behind the scenes changes which customers won’t notice. One thing that you will notice when you visit us here is that we are going to focus more on the number of social cats who spend their time in the playpen. The total number of cats we have in will become less of a focus.

We believe this will make it a more enjoyable experience for our customers. For example, if we have a dozen cats here, but six of them spend most of their time in the retreat, we only have six cats who interact with customers. However, if we have eight cats in but all of them interact with customers, that’s better for everyone.

We believe this will lead a better experience for customers and it will result in getting more cats adopted. Cats who spend their time in the playpen here at The Cat Cafe are much more likely to find their forever homes. That’s a big focus for us.

With that in mind, that is why we had a few cats leave us for other adoption facilities and a couple join us who are much more sociable. We’re going to introduce you to Cora and Noah, who are brother and sister. Both of these cats came to us when the person they were living with died, and their next of kin were not able to care for the cats.

Cora didn’t take any time to decide that she wanted to spend her time out in the cat playpen. She’s a two year old dilute tortie, who’s a little bigger than she should be. When she is adopted, she will need to go to a home that will help her lose a little weight. But until then, you can see Cora investigating the playpen. She also enjoys hanging out in the Urban Feline cradle.

Her brother Noah is still figuring out things, so you won’t see him as much. We’ve seen him investigating the playpen and stretching out. He generally does this before we open at The Cat Cafe and after hours. We’re working on coaxing him to spend more time in the playpen. When he does, we’re sure this three year old, 13 pound boy is going to get a lot of attention.

We hope you understand the changes we’ve made here at The Cat Cafe. Come on in to enjoy spending time with Cora, Nora, and the rest of the clowder!

The kinds of cats we get here at The Cat Cafe seems to come in different waves. For a while, we’ll have a lot of black cats. Then we’ll have a lot of gray cats. And then we’ll have a bunch of brown tabbies. It looks like now is the time for us to have a lot of orange cats. With big Micho being here for a while, and Princess Candy Corn already representing the gingers, we added a couple of new orange tabbies to our clowder.

Our two latest cats arrived at San Diego Humane Society after being transferred in from Department of Animal Services. We don’t think they enjoyed their initial experience with San Diego Humane Society, because they got neutered upon their arrival there. But we’ll do our best to make sure they have a more enjoyable experience here at The Cat Cafe.

Say hello to Dean and Deluca. What a fitting name for a bonded pair, don’t you think? And when you see them, you’ll agree that they are definitely cats that belong together. Both of these boys are around 18 months of age and they weigh in at 8.5 pounds. They’re both friendly cats and we’re really happy to have them here in the clowder at The Cat Cafe.

Dean is the more shy and lighter one of the two brothers. He’s been a little cautious since arriving here, and hasn’t been out and about in the playpen like his brother. But when you do interact with him, he’s very sweet. We needed to move him so that we could clean when he arrived, and he curled up in a little ball in our arms, purring the whole time!

Deluca has been more interactive and inquisitive since arriving. He’s out exploring the playpen, and he actively solicits attention from customers and staff. And when he’s in the mood, you’ll hear a sweet little meow from him.

Come on in, meet our newest kitties, and say hello to some of your old friends here at The Cat Cafe.

 

We had quite a few adoptions recently at The Cat Cafe, and some of these adoptions were of cats who spent all day in the playpen. They only went into the retreat to eat, drink, and use the litter box. These cats preferred to spend their time interacting with our customers. And with the Labor Day holiday, it made it more difficult to get cats in to take their place.

But our partner, San Diego Humane Society, worked with us to get animals in. And that is why today we can introduce you to two new cats. These two bring the clowder at The Cat Cafe to ten. It’s a couple fewer than our maximum capacity, but it should mean that there will be quite a few cats in the playpen.

Princess Candy Corn has a long name, and an interesting story. She’s an orange cat, which makes her a little unusual. About three out of four orange cats are male, so having an orange cat that’s female is fun.

Princess Candy Corn is five years old, and she weighs in at ten pounds. She takes a while to warm up to people, so make sure you approach her slowly or let her come to you. When she decides she likes you, you’ll be rewarded with lots of loving head bonks and sweet little meows.

The other cat to join the clowder at The Cat Cafe is Aloha. His name means both hello and good bye in Hawaiian, and it’s fitting. He likes to interact with people, but when he’s done, he will tell you good bye. Just like with any cat, when he does this, it’s best to give him the space and time he wants and try to interact with him later.

Aloha is a big boy! He’s three years old and he weighs 17.7 pounds. And unlike some cats who weigh that much, he’s not overweight. He’s just big and you can tell if you take a look at his paws, which are very big for a cat.

Come say hello to the two newest members of the clowder here at The Cat Cafe. And you can always spend time with some of your favorite long time residents.

It’s been a while since we told you about newly arrived cats. That’s because some of the cats who arrived at The Cat Cafe were adopted within a day or two! But now, some new arrivals have stayed with us long enough for us to tell you about them.

Oreo is a big, seven year old boy. Weighing in at 23 pounds, Oreo will need to go to a home where he gets the help he needs to lose weight. But he doesn’t let his size slow him down. He loves interacting with people, even those who he just met. Oreo may even hop into your lap, but be ready for it when it happens!

Chiquilla arrived at the same time as Oreo. This girl also needs a hand losing a few pounds. She’s ten years old, and weighs 14 pounds. Chiquilla is more shy than Oreo, and she’ll take a while before she trusts you. She’s had the chance to get to know the staff at The Cat Cafe, and she loves interacting with us.

Those of you who have followed us for a while won’t be surprised to learn that a bonded pair of cats arrived at The Cat Cafe. After all, we adopted out Sasha and Ellie, so why not bring in another bonded pair? Say hello to five year old brothers Chevy and Chase.

Chevy is the more shy of the two brothers. He’s a solid 14 pounds, and while he’s shy, he’s very friendly. Chevy has found his spot in The Cat Cafe to hang out, and he enjoys people slowly approaching him and petting him. He’ll lean into your hand if you do that.

You won’t have to worry about how you approach Chase, because he’ll approach you! At 12 pounds, he’s very outgoing, and he will seek out people to interact with. Be ready for this grey and white boy to come right up to you and demand attention.

Ted is a very active two year old house panther. He loves interacting with people at The Cat Cafe. He’s still a little feisty with other cats who approach him too closely. It’s only been a few days, and we’re sure he’ll calm down. Ted’s very sleek as well, with his 12 pounds giving him a very athletic look.

We wanted to make sure that Chiquilla wasn’t the only girl at The Cat Cafe. That’s why San Diego Humane Society brought in a couple of girls to round out our clowder.

Nell was a stray who was brought in to Department of Animal Services before being transferred to San Diego Humane Society. This three year old girl is a little on the small side, at eight pounds. She’s shy, but she does accept friendly interaction. You’ll have to give Nell time to get comfortable with you.

Last, but not least, is Freya. This four year old, eleven pound girl is probably the most shy of all of the cats. We’re sure that she’ll blossom at The Cat Cafe. You may not see much of her, because she’s spending her time in the retreat. In time, she’ll join us in the playpen and you’ll get to see her personality shine!

 

Since we last updated you on what’s happening at The Cat Cafe, we’ve had quite a few cats come in. We didn’t get a chance to introduce them to you properly. The reason? They got adopted before we had a chance to tell you about them!

Since we last posted, Gabriel, who we introduced you to, got adopted. We had two kittens, Marley and Ozzie, who were only with us for a couple of days. Roberta, a two year old calico, only stayed with us for a couple of days before she going home.

Roberta’s adoption was an interesting one. Her adopter was in San Diego for a convention. They visited The Cat Cafe, and fell in love with Roberta. After purchasing a carrier from a local pet store, they adopted Roberta right before getting on their plane to head home..

Roberta is the second cat we’ve sent to the Bay Area. Look out Cat Town and Kittea! We’re sending SoCal cats to take over!

We don’t know if the latest addition to the clowder at The Cat Cafe will have as long of a journey to get home. But we’re sure she’s going to go to a good home.

Say hello to Gypsy, who has a very fitting name. A kind person took Gypsy, who was a stray, to the San Diego County Department of Animal Services. She came in with a bad upper respiratory infection, which needed treatment. She was transferred to San Diego Humane Society in order to make this easier for her.

It took a while, but Gypsy fought off the infection. After that Gypsy made the trip to The Cat Cafe. Gray Baby, who seems to have settled into a role as greeter of the new cats, went right up to her to try to play.

Gypsy wasn’t quite ready for that. She told Gray Baby to back off, which he did. But he’s persistent and keeps on trying to play with her. She’s slowly warming up to this.

With people, Gypsy is a little skittish, but she’s very friendly. She will approach people and ask for interaction. Like any cat, Gypsy has her limits. When she reaches them, she’ll let you know. Not in a mean way. Gypsy will just walk away.

We haven’t seen too much of Gypsy in the playpen at The Cat Cafe yet, but it’s only been a few days. She’ll be out in the playpen soon.

Come on by and meet Gypsy and the rest of the cats in The Cat Cafe clowder!