The KC Kitty Cafe pops up in North Kansas City
Nothing turns a dignified, rational adult into a quivering, whimpering mess faster than kittens. So you can imagine the wobble factor for a place called the KC Kitty Café.
At a Saturday pop-up event the cafe held at Wine & Design in North Kansas City earlier this winter, the kittens arrived, and people stopped making sense when they talked. “Oh, my god, it’s so tiny,” a woman exclaimed as she hugged a squirming orange furball to her chest. “Look at you! Just look at your little face,” someone else said as a brown-and-black-striped tabby batted a toy around the rug where 15 of us sat, cross-legged and awestruck, our wineglasses and coffee mugs set aside in favor of dangling feather toys.
Another woman was heard to say, “I could probably fit this animal’s entire head in my mouth.”
OK, that might have been me.
You might be thinking, sure, kittens are great — but what, exactly, is a cat café? According to Kitty Café founder Audrey Boese, it’s “a place where people can come and interact with adoptable cats and have a cup of coffee or tea.” So, it’s like a regular coffee shop — except with cats.
It’s been a workable formula in other cities — San Diego, Austin and Denver, to name a few. And now KC Kitty Café aims to be the first in the Kansas City area.
“It’s a cool place for people to come get their cat fix,” Boese says. “It allows cats that would be living in cages to have a free-roaming and social environment where they can interact with people, and it frees up space in shelters. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Though the pop-up event featured kittens, Boese says the actual coffee shop will house primarily adult cats. As she puts it, “They’re the lovable ones who will cuddle with you while you’re studying.”
All of the cats will be available for adoption through the KC Pet Project, where Boese volunteers as a dog walker when she’s not working as a dental sales rep for Henry Schein. But even if you’re not looking to take in a cat — or you simply cannot add another pet to your menagerie — the Kitty Café will be one-stop shopping for passing purrs and cuddles.
“It’s a really cool environment for people who can’t have cats or have an allergic boyfriend or roommate,” Boese says.
The location for the cat café has not been finalized, but Boese is looking in North Kansas City, where she lives, as well as in midtown. Depending on the space, she would like to offer a variety of cat-centric events — movie nights, bingo, painting, yoga. She hopes to see the KC Cat Café open its doors within the next six months.
And here you thought coffee shops were places to share intelligent conversations, as opposed to inane ramblings about some cat’s impossibly fluffy belly. Well, you thought wrong — and trust me, it’s better this way.
