Crescent City Cat Club

THE CRESCENT CITY CAT CLUB STORY

 

So…about 4 years ago my dad sent me a newspaper clipping about Cat Town, a cat café in Oakland, CA.  He knew that my first love has always been cats, although I have also worked as a certified dog-trainer, transporting canines to the only women’s prison in Louisiana, and teaching the prisoners to obedience train the dogs, thereby making the dogs more adoptable, and the offenders more hireable, upon release.  It’s a great program and exists in several states. 

Unfortunately, the prison flooded a few years ago, and the women were scattered.  It was at that point that I decided to look into pursuing the idea of the cat café in New Orleans. I was retiring after 28 years as a real estate appraiser and developer, and wanted one last project to carry me into the future.

After several false starts trying to find a commercial space that someone would rent to me (“What? Cats?  Adoption?  You’ll never make your rent!”), I discovered that a building  I already owned was zoned commercially.  I had always used it as a residential tri-plex income property, but it turned out it had commercial zoning, which made it suitable for the conversion to The Cat Club, with a short-term rental to support it. 

 

 

 

So that was it, really.  It took me 18 months from incorporating as “Furry Friends of Louisiana, Inc.”, to our soft opening on International Cat Day, Oct. 16, 2017.  We took ¾ of the front building (a shotgun double) for The Cat Club, with the reception and kitten room on the right side, and a small apartment behind it, which I have ended up living in, and then the whole left side as the rest of The Cat Club.  We converted the kitchen to a work area, with the laundry and snack room, and made the bath in the rear of the unit wheel-chair accessible.

It’s a lovely conversion, if I do say so myself.  The building has great, high ceilings, and fireplace mantles and other architectural details, including beautiful, old, wide-plank hardwood floors.  It has multiple windows in every room, and actually is more appealing as The Cat Club than it ever was as apartments.  We’ve painted everything bright colors, and there is no accent piece that compares with….a cat!

The courtyard between The Cat Club and the rear rental cottage became the “catio”, and we became the only cat “café” in the country (I believe) with an outdoor space in which to visit with our kitties. 

We have been open 5 months now, and have adopted out 29 kitties. We currently have 19 cats up for adoption, and are waiting for 2 litters of kittens to be delivered.  We have had hundreds of visitors, and every one of them has left blissed out after their visit.  We offer comfort for people who are in town temporarily and missing their animals.  Or some just want to see 25 cats in one place that they can put their hands on.  Some come looking for a forever friend, and some come because their husband or child is allergic, or their landlord or lady won’t let them have a cat.  We’ve had children have their first experiences with cats at our house, and solitary folks come for a few hours of companionship.  Every day is different, and I wouldn’t change any of it.

We’re also a resource in the neighborhood, lending out traps, for instance, so people can trap local strays and get them spayed or neutered in an effort to cut down on the overpopulation in the streets.  We also have the outline of a Senior-to-Senior program, where we would pair older folks with older cats and a volunteer, to make sure that everyone is doing ok.  None of our adoptions is ever final, so if something happens and the cat needs to be rehomed, we will take care of that, too.

 

So….if we get some money from this funding campaign, the first thing we would do is buy a trailer, and retrofit it to carry all our kitties away from New Orleans in case of a hurricane or other disaster.  From June1 to November 30 of each year, we all have to be concerned about the weather.  Should there be an event, the shelters have the huge responsibility of getting their animals to safety, so we would have to do the same, on our own.  We would like an 8’ lightweight trailer that could be pulled by my compact SUV.  We would need space for about 30 cats and kittens, in crates, on shelves.  We would need to air condition it, too. 

 

We would also like to expand our advertising campaign.  We find that everyone who comes loves it, and complains only that they didn’t know about it sooner!  More visitors would result in more adoptions.  Cat Town in Oakland has adopted out over 2,000 cats, which has taken a tremendous weight off the local shelter.