This new Tacoma cafe’s residents will be furry and adoptable. Cat cafe is coming soon

Co-owners Kristi Martin and Melanie Weaver will judge their business successful when they lose every single one of the hardworking personnel in their lounge.

Those staffers can be quite finicky, come with fur coats, are prone to taking long naps and will be adoptable at Catffeinated, a new business opening in Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue neighborhood. The lounge will feature rescue and foster cats.

“You come in and interact with the cats, and then hopefully you take one home,” Martin said of the concept. “This is a fun way to get people involved in rescuing animals.”

When it’s completed, visitors will enter one side of the building and find a coffee cafe with beverages and a simple menu serving ready-made food.

Separated by a window and fully enclosed, the other half of the business will be a self-contained cat lounge filled with cats ready to go home with their permanent families after an interview process.

The cats also will be interviewed, the owners said.

“We want cats to do well in this environment,” said Martin. “This is not a typical foster house where cats have their own space, so we need to choose wisely to make sure cats do well in this environment. We do want these cats to leave us and find their permanent homes.”

The owners believe the business will meet current health codes requiring no crossover between pets and food preparation.

“The cats just need to be away from the food prep area and kept completely separate, which is what we’re going to do with floor-to-ceiling walls and windows,” said Martin.

There’s one more level to the business — an immersive cat experience. Locals will be able to hang out with the cats in the lounge by booking hour-long blocks of quality cat time on the catffeinated.net website. Those one-hour blocks will cost around $10 (there is no fee or appointment necessary to dine at the neighboring cafe).

No, you can’t bring your cat to play with the other cats. Only resident cats will be allowed.

The owners intend to keep the human capacity in the cat lounge to about 10 people to encourage a relaxed atmosphere.

The interaction rules in the cat lounge will be pretty simple: People are welcome, but cats run the show. If a cat approaches, feel free to interact, but guests will be discouraged from invading the space of the cats and, well, cats usually aren’t shy in letting others know when they want to be left alone.

“You can walk up to and mingle with the cats, but, as we explain, they’re fully loaded with claws. You need to be aware of it,” said Martin. “We’ll have toys in the cat lounge and furniture. Most likely in the middle of the day, the cats will be sleeping. We’ll have all kinds of interactive things in the lounge, but they are cats and they’re going to do what they want on their own schedule, whether you are there or not.”

The owners plan to offer the cat lounge for private bridal showers, parties, yoga with cats and special events aimed at children younger than 8 who typically will not be allowed in the cat lounge. Events for children will feature the lounge’s friendliest residents, said Martin.

Construction on the exterior of the building at 2515 Sixth Ave. is underway. Once new siding is up and exterior work completed, Martin and Weaver will start to turn the 1,500-square-foot space into the separate lounge and cafe spaces.

Details are in flux, the biggest of which is establishing agreements with rescue and pet organizations that adopt out cats. So far, the Catffeinated owners have had informal talks with such groups but have not yet made official arrangements with any organization.

The structure of the business is similar to other cat cafes, such as Seattle’s Meowtropolitan, which also adopts out cats and has a cat lounge with a separate cafe space. The cat cafe business model is an import from Taiwan, where cat cafes have been fixtures for more than a decade.

In Tacoma, another organization tried to launch something similar. Last year, Cat & Co. Cafe raised money to open a cat cafe but did not meet its fundraising goal and will not be opening.

Catffeinated owners are hoping for an opening by spring or summer if they can stick to their construction schedule.

Catffeinated

Where: 2515 Sixth Ave., Tacoma

Info: Catffeinated.net or facebook.com/catffeinatedtacoma

Opening: Between spring and summer, depending on construction

This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 11:00 AM.