The changing of seasons always makes me nostalgic because each is a more obvious sign of the passing of time.
I woke up this morning to sunlight streaming through our windows (finally) and old man Guinness sitting on my chest yelling at me to feed him. Yes he literally yells in my face each morning (unless Andrew’s alarm goes off first in which case he’s the one that gets yelled at).
This might sound terrible to a non-cat owner, but for me this behavior is a joy to wake up to because it’s an instant reminder that I still have my best buddy with me.
Guinness has been a part of my life since he was hamster sized – I could literally hold him in the palm of one hand. He looked like a Black & Tan beer so that’s why I named him Guinness. I was 22 when I got him and Rugby. The two of them traveled home with me every Christmas, moved to Florida with me, moved to Atlanta with me, and of course traveled cross-country to California when we made the big move out here.
Guinness – in his younger years – was an 18 lb handful.
I workout.
He learned how to open every cabinet and drawer in my various apartments – he even figured out how to open sliding pocket doors! I would come home from work and find him in all sorts of places. In my single days I remember waking up late one night to a loud crashing noise in my kitchen. Terrified I jumped out of bed, grabbed a baseball bat and went to investigate what or who had broken into my house. As I turned on the kitchen light, my gaze traveled across the kitchen floor to find cat food kibble EVERYWHERE. As my eyes followed the path of disaster, I then saw my kitchen pantry door wide open and counted up one, two, three, four, five wire pantry shelves to find Guinness happily sitting 6+ feet up where the cat food storage container used to be. It was 2AM and I had a 6AM flight to catch, so I guess he wanted to make sure I didn’t forget to feed him his breakfast.
These days he is slow, a little hard of hearing, and his frame has become smaller and more fragile. He has small cell lymphoma which we’ve been able to manage well with a steroid and chemotherapy (cats handle chemo better than people do). He can’t jump like he used to, so I have pet stairs for him to get up onto our bed. He spends the majority of his days snuggling with Letty – who we call Nurse Letty because she seems to sense when her presence is a comfort. And every night I fall asleep with his warm little body curled up against my legs.
Nurse Letty & Guinness
I know our time together is more limited than it once was, and therefore the time I spend sitting with him, petting him, listening to him yell at me while he licks my face in the mornings – becomes the most special and enjoyable part of my day. The joy and happiness he – and Rugby – brought to my life over the years is a really big part of why we do what we do.
I want to help people find that special soul who meets them at the door when they get home each day, who they can snuggle with, cry with, and binge watch Bravo TV with. Because in doing that, I figure I can help others experience happiness and connection in a world that is often filled with sadness and pain.
Do you have a similar story with your own furry family member? Feel free to share in the comments section below!
If you’ve spent time with us at the cafe or followed alongside our journey on social media, then you’ve heard us talk about our big adoption goals – 500 adoptions by January 2020.
We’ve had 46 adoptions as of the date of this post, so we have a loooong way to go. Here’s the great news…
These 46 adoptions prove our concept works!
And what’s even cooler is that this number actually means that 52 cats have been saved. See, each cat adopted from Cat & Craft enables our rescue partner to save another life.
Let’s a have look at how this works…
The Cat Rescue Cycle
It is often said that rescue takes a village, and I can assure you there is a LOT of work that goes into transitioning cats from an at-risk situation and into a safe loving home.
Cat & Craft <> LYFF Rescue – Cat Rescue Cycle
STEP 1: LYFF Rescue Pulls Cats From Area Shelters
After pulling a new rescue, all of the behind-the-scenes work begins…
intake examinations
blood work
physical exams
spay/neutering if necessary
vaccinations
microchipping
specialty care
Once each cat is deemed healthy and ready for adoption, it’s time the next step…
STEP 2: Transfer into a temporary foster home.
Cats live with a LYFF Rescue foster volunteer for a period of around two weeks.
During this time they can learn whether the C&C cat lounge will be good fit and what kind of permanent home would be ideal for that particular cat (e.g. good with dogs, good with other cats, etc.).
If the cat shows signs they’d cohabitate well with other cats then they ‘graduate’ to the next step…
STEP 3: Welcome to the Cat & Craft foster lounge
In the Cat & Craft foster lounge, these cats get more exposure to people than they might in a traditional adoption setting or in an individual foster’s home – allowing for more opportunities for interactions.
Nemo struttn’ his stuff
It’s sort of like dating – the more people each cat interacts with, the more likely it is to find it’s forever family.
And given the cage-free layout of the foster lounge, the cat behaves more like they would at home – increasing the likelihood of a great match.
Then comes my favorite part…
STEP 4: Adoption to a ‘furrever’ home
When you see the pictures on our Instagram or Facebook pages with the blue cat background, most likely it’s an adoption pic like these:
Happy Tails!
Hopefully you can see now a better picture of all that happens to get these kitties into C&C and ultimately to a loving home.
So what can you do to help?…
LYFF Rescue needs temporary fosters
Adult cats just like those you see being adopted from Cat & Craft are sitting in shelter cages waiting for a savior every day and LYFF Rescue is ready and willing to be that savior – they need your help though.
LYFF Rescue needs temporary foster volunteers in order to help save more cats and transition them to C&C for adoption.
Here’s how foster volunteering works…
You provide space in your heart and home for a rescue cat.
LYFF Rescue provides you with all the supplies you need to care for your foster – food, toys, litter, etc…
After two weeks, your foster either graduates to the Cat & Craft foster lounge or goes to a more permanent foster.
Pretty easy right? Well if you think so, then here’s your next step..
Andrew and I had our first foster experience back in 2015, long before we ever arrived in California. I had considered it for years, often hearing how rescues desperately needed temporary homes for the animals they worked to save.
Back then it was easy for me to come up with excuses about why I couldn’t be a foster – we worked too much, we traveled too much, we already had three cats, etc.
Then one Fall a feral cat had kittens under our back porch.
Nursing pile of fuzzballs
I called every single rescue and shelter organization I could find expecting someone would come out and get the kittens and momma and put them into an adoption program.
Many of the organizations I contacted laughed at my naivety, and others took the time to explain how they had less than zero resources to help.
So if these animals were to have any chance at a better life, it was solely on Andrew and I to provide them with the option. While this specific situation involved trapping and handling all the veterinary care and adoptions on our own, it forced us into fostering and the realization that all my reasons for why I “couldn’t” were just excuses and my fear of the unknown.
We’ve since fostered cats and kittens in our home here in California. We’ve even “foster failed” in that we adopted one of our fosters from LYFF because we fell madly in love with her (I’m talking about Letty, our gorgeous tortie gal you’ve probably seen on my instagram).
Letty the circus tortie
And because we are crazy we then built a business where we could care for even more cats and help them find their happy endings!
I say all of this to tell you first hand how easy – and rewarding – it is to foster. You get to play a pivotal role in saving a life with almost zero commitment.
As I write this it’s International Women’s Day. Adopted as a global day of recognition by the United Nations in 1975, today people everywhere commemorate the inspiring role of women around the world and their work to secure women’s rights and build more equitable societies. In the world of cat cafes, there are LOTS of amazing female entrepreneurs who have made a commitment to provide a better life for the animals they work to find homes for. Do a quick scroll through of Instagram and you’ll lose count – Pounce, JavaCats, Crumbs & Whiskers, MacTabby, The Cats Meow, Cat Therapy, the list goes on and on. But behind the scenes there are also countless women involved with the various rescues and shelter organizations that are affiliated with these cafes.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality”.
Yoko Ono
Did you know our rescue partner LYFF is women founded and operated? If not I want to take a few minutes to tell you about them, because these ladies work 24/7 to save animals, and they don’t get paid a dime for the time and resources they dedicate towards caring for those who have no voice and at times cannot care for themselves. Their work extends far beyond the cat & kitten foster and adoption program you get a glimpse of by visiting and following us. So here they are in their own words.
Christine Hubbard – Founder
Christine Hubbard
“In April 2011, I decided to do something for the greater good in honor of my birthday. I decided to start volunteering at one of our local shelters. Boy did I not realize how that decision was going to change my life forever. From that day on I have been actively working to change the lives of feral cats. I had set many goals and had many dreams of what I wanted to see for our feral felines. We still have a ways to go but just in the past four years have made huge strides.
One of my dreams was that one day shelters would end the euthanasia of feral cats which came true at one shelter, and a goal was to get a TNR program started at the local shelter and that was achieved. I wanted to share my journey with all of you in hopes that people can see just one person CAN make a difference. Please take a stand and be the voice of our feral felines. Let’s take this journey together to change the lives of feral cats.”
Melissa Dunaj – Senior Director
Melissa
“I have been in animal welfare for close to 10 years, both working in vet offices as a vet assistant and multiple roles with local shelters. I found my calling with Love Your Feral Felines in June of 2017 and it feels like home! We are able to step in where the shelters aren’t able to.
We have big plans for our Cat & Kitten Foster & Adoption Program and will continue our life-saving work through our other, more developed programs as well. We learn something new everyday in rescue and we hope to continue to make a positive difference in the world.”
Then of course you have our amazing team of cat lounge hosts – Sydney, Jennifer, Ashleigh, Veronica, Shelley, Lanie, Kaelin + our rockstar manager Charlene and our rockstar baristas Delaney, Nikki, Hoyan and Katy. I’m going to talk more about them in future posts because I think each of you would enjoy knowing a bit more about the faces you see when you come visit us.
Bottom line of all this is each one of us all share in the dream that has become Cat & Craft. What Andrew and I gave physical form to would be nothing but an empty shell without the women (and men) who put in their time to help us all make a difference, because each believes wholeheartedly that together we can and will make a difference. It’s already happening… 44 cats – some of which had spent MONTHS in a shelter – have found their forever homes since we opened on January 12 2019.
With intention you too can do anything you put your mind and heart into. So I hope you will spend some time today celebrating you, and all the amazing women in your own life.
Time to knock the dust off the ol’ blog! And WOW… looking back at
our first 30 days in business and beyond that the final push to complete
construction and get our doors open by first of the year, SO much has
happened that should be celebrated.
Tuesday February 12th marked our 30th day in business, and in those
30 days we’ve had 30 adoptions! Can you believe it? We talk about
adoption all the time and it’s working – our supporters and the
community is stepping up and helping us make the difference we promised
we would spearhead.
We are so beyond grateful, but there is much more work to do and our
rescue partner has many, many more lives to save. Our goal is still 500
adoptions in our first calendar year, so there are 470 more souls that
we need to connect to their future fur-covered best friend!
Yesterday was also Valentine’s Day, and we had so much fun
celebrating love with our customers on this special day. The cats could
feel the good vibes too – the whole crew was out playing and snuggling!
Hello friends, happy almost Halloween! October has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The nights are getting cooler and I’m lucky to have a row of beautiful American Sweetgum “Liquid Amber” trees across the street from my house (spoiler, I can get really nerdy about trees)!
And because Halloween is approaching it’s almost time to pull out my favorite Halloween movie ever – Disney’s Hocus Pocus!
Earlier this year when I thought we would be open before Halloween, I had grand plans to show Hocus Pocus on repeat in the cat lounge while hosting Sanderson Sister and Black Cat costume contests. I even have a Disney official Black Flame candle (those of you who love the movie know what I’m talking about)!
All this said, I’ve just given you a huge sneak peek into what’s going down at Cat & Craft for Halloween 2019. 😜
For those of you who read our most recent newsletter we had some fun celebrating House Panthers… and wow we got so many emails from readers sharing pictures of their own adorable black cats!
I LOVE hearing stories from you about your feline family members and why you love them so… each one makes my heart do happy backflips. So to continue our celebration of black cats, here are a few adorable pictures we received!
Be sure to check out our social media in the coming weeks as we are making some fun progress with cafe construction. All is slowly but surely coming together!
“By all the lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer” – Helen Hunt Jackson
If you follow us on social media you know our oldest boy Rugby has been battling some issues that come along with old age since last winter. He’s had a great couple of months and for that we are so thankful. However his body now grows weaker and our remaining time is short.
I remember losing my first cat. His name was Smokey and he was a dark grey Persian with yellow eyes. When he fell ill my parents tried all that was medically available but the time came where my mom feared he would suffer. The time was her decision and our vet came out to the house. I remember holding him while she pushed the anesthesia, watching him fall asleep. I remember how it felt when he died in my arms. We put him in a casket with his favorite toys and buried him in the garden. I stayed outside until nightfall, then panicked and collected all the candles I could find so that I could light them around his grave. I had just started my sophomore year in high school and my younger self hated the thought of him being outside alone in the dark.
I don’t remember much after the candles. Time passed and we adopted two Himalayan brothers named Coco and Sugar. They were loved and lived with my parents well into their teens. When they passed I was living on my own with Guinness and Rugby. The loss of Sugar and Coco felt sad but somewhat distanced and peripheral.
A good friend of mine joined me for sunset the other night and said “our pets are like little piggy banks of unconditional love that we pour all our thoughts, feelings and emotions into”.This description rings so true, and helps me understand why entering this phase with Rugby seems to have opened the flood gates to 17 years of nostalgia. The first pet 100% my own responsibility. And nearly two decades of time shared with him.
As I sit with him and listen to Spotify’s “This is John Mayer” playlist on repeat (long time favorite artist of mine whose songs bring to mind specific times in my life) my mind opens it’s filing cabinet of memories Rugby has been present for.
Bringing him home at 12 weeks old in 2002 and watching him snuggle himself against my pillows in the center of my bed. I was 23 and living in my first apartment in Atlanta after graduating from college.
Taking him and Guinness to visit my parents each Christmas. Just like kids visiting grandparents, I’d set their carrier down in the kitchen and both would stroll out about their second home where nothing was strange or unfamiliar.
Him laying on my chest and purring as I sobbed over losing a job… losing a relationship… growing up.
His fluffy little self curled into a ball snoozing in his favorite spot on the back of the couch in the first home I shared with my husband Andrew. This mental image spans seasons as the beautiful maple tree outside our living room window would shade the light through cycles of orange and red, to cold winter white, and back to lush green.
And now, the other night when we took him to see the ocean for the first time. How he watched the sunset with a peaceful knowing look on his face, as though he were thinking and feeling the same things as I was.
I certainly don’t share this to bring anyone down, rather I need to speak my feelings and acknowledge this process. I recognize this moment in time brings with it lessons to learn and grow from. One realization is hope that the space we are creating with Cat & Craft is one where you will feel safe to feel. Where stories of your loved ones are always welcome. I promise to have a stock of Kleenex on hand for us at all times. And together we will count on the silly furry mob of foster fur babies to provide us with the necessary comedic relief and bright joy of good times ahead.
Greetings Cat & Craft family!
I’ve heard from so many of you this week asking how you can help out and get involved. We haven’t even finished building the space and it already feels like we have an amazing community of cat lovers (and coffee lovers) sending us tons of good vibes. It makes my heart sing and I can’t wait to see each of your smiling faces when we open this fall!
Let me address three of the most popular questions we’ve received this week:
1. Are you guys hiring? The answer is YES! While we haven’t started the process just yet, in the coming weeks we will post job descriptions for each role available at Cat & Craft, along with details for how to apply. As soon as the job descriptions and application portal is live we will send out an email to everyone who has subscribed to our newsletter (go to the main page and click “Get the Latest Updates” to subscribe if you haven’t already). We will also post the announcement to our social media channels, so be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and/or Twitter so you don’t miss out!
2. How can I help? We are so glad you asked! First, please help us spread the word by telling your cat and coffee loving friends/family about Cat & Craft! Secondly, our rescue partner is always looking for good people willing to volunteer any time, effort and/or resources they can spare. Take a look at LYFF Rescue to learn more about their volunteer programs and ways you can help out!
3. When do you open? The million dollar question! I REALLY wish I could give you an exact date, but we are still waiting on the city to issue our building permit. Until we have that in hand the buildout schedule remains flexible with a targeted opening date of mid – late October. Don’t worry, as soon as we have the date confirmed we will be sending out many excited announcements via the channels mentioned above.
Have another question, or want to make a suggestion? Drop us a note at info@catandcraftcafe.com. We’d love to hear from you!
With Love and Light,
Caroline
Greetings friends! As you may have noticed if you follow us on social media, our demolition work began last week! This was a big milestone for me, one that I began envisioning well before we moved to California.
When we found our space, the majority of it had at one point served as a dentist office. Walls from old offices, cabinets, old x-ray equipment and even biohazard containers (yikes) had been left behind gathering dust. Andrew and I threw some pic axes into the dry wall just for the fun of it, then removed our silly selves so that the demolition team could proceed with the real work!
As each layer of prior use has been removed, it is not lost on me that each wall, ceiling tile and lighting fixture once played a part in bringing someone else’s dream to life. And now – just as we encounter in other aspects of life – those elements have completed their purpose and are removed to make room for something new.
Breaking something down – physically, mentally, emotionally – makes space available to create, to transition, to grow and improve.
This concept holds true for the work ahead of us. If you traced the past experience of each adoptable cat in foster care beyond the day they were pulled from a shelter, you would most likely find a point where something in that animal’s life broke down. His or her owner passed away, or the owner encountered a hardship where they could no longer provide care and companionship. And sadly sometimes the cat or kitten was simply no longer wanted.
It is our opportunity – and YOUR opportunity – to meet each of these animals in their broken space to help them create a new and improved life. A second chance to love and be loved in return. Glennon Doyle recently shared this beautiful passage from the Talmud:
This work is good work indeed… and by simply taking the time to read this you are committing to help us accomplish that good work. For that I am most grateful.
Hello! It’s almost July can you believe it? I sound like my mom when I say this but… every year seems to go by faster and faster. I’m overdue on an update for you guys because I was selected for jury duty over the past two weeks – but I’m thankful I was called now instead of a few months from now when we will be ready to open!
I have a LOT of updates for you guys and positive progress to report. For those who don’t follow along with us on social media here is a detailed highlight reel.
Our design and proposed build out was submitted to the San Diego Department of Environmental Health on June 1. This was the one piece of our puzzle that always held a bit of worry for me, because plan submission sort of happens in a vacuum. You don’t get to sit across the table from the reviewer and explain your concept or how your operational procedures are structured… so it’s a good bit of crossing fingers, hoping the reviewer understands the concept and that you followed all the requirements, and admittedly saying some prayers that they like cats!
We received our first round of comments back from the health department this past Wednesday and I was stunned – only 7 comments! Each being fairly basic inquiries requesting more detail on exhaust fans in the bathrooms, making sure we file a certain form for a FOG (that’s industry lingo for a grease trap, sometimes required if you are serving dairy and other liquids that contain oils or fats), asking us to confirm that our turbo chef oven doesn’t require an exhaust hood… etc. etc…
That was it! No changes to our design! No added restrictions or limitations to our cat lounge! I straight up did a happy dance on the steps of the shiny new courthouse downtown while on break from the trial.
Running a simultaneous path, we submitted the same design and build plan to the City of Vista on June 13. They informed us they are super busy right now with a lot of projects in queue for review, and to anticipate their response time to be delayed more than usual. We’ve been told we should have their first round comments back by July 18. I had hoped for a shorter turnaround time, but this is a good reminder for me to relax, enjoy the process and trust that all pieces do fall into place in their own right time.
So let me get to what all this means and our next steps. Once we receive first round comments back from the City, we go into the “Delta 1” phase with our design. This means our food service and architectural team incorporates all the revisions and info requests from the Health Department, the City of Vista, and our property owner into the design and the updated drawing package is then resubmitted to all parties for a secondary review.
Pending the City’s comments, we are currently scheduled to begin demolition of the space week of July 16, following a hazardous material survey (making sure there are no materials currently onsite that contain asbestos) scheduled to take place next week. And then we will swing the first sledgehammer to start the process of converting the space into Cat & Craft!
I understand if this is a lot of boring detail. ‘Where are the cat pictures!?!’ you say. Trust me I get it… but it’s important to give you some insight into all that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to starting up a new business. I totally understand why ‘Coming Soon’ signs tend to stay up for months.. there are a lot of rules and regulations to wade through before you can open doors – or install doors in our case!
One more thing – we have an awesome sign in the works! I’m really pleased with how our logo looks on the building and when I got our first proof my heart sang. It’s so rewarding to to see something you’ve wished for, envisioned and dreamed about for years begin to take shape. Not for me, but for the benefit of every cat and every person who enters our space, and the community each of you guys is helping us create.
I hope each of you enjoys as happy and safe 4th of July. How great is it that we live in a nation where we all have the freedom to pursue our dreams and create good things… I’m grateful for that and grateful for each one of you.
Hard to believe we are almost half way through the year already but you know time flies when you are having FUN… and we’ve been up to some big stuff since I last dropped you a note.
We got to meet so many awesome folks at the Vista Strawberry Festival over Memorial Day weekend… and we even had some cool cat visitors check out our booth!
But let me back up a few weeks. The month of May required us to give some extreme focus to the coffee shop portion of our business so that we could get our plans in front of the health department as quickly as possible. I had no illusions that building a coffee shop would be easy, but holy wow did I underestimate the level of detail that goes into submitting a food service design plan for review.
First there is the basic equipment – coffee been grinders, espresso machine, ice machine, refrigerators, etc. Then there are things like food prep carts with garnishing compartments, MORE refrigerators, multiple freezers, nitro tanks for the cold brew and kombucha, Turbo Chef ovens, and high temp dishwashers. THEN there are water lines, drainage lines, power lines, grease traps, triple wash sinks, and finishes the health department likes (FRP) and finishes they don’t like (anything not white lol). It’s sort of like if you were to go shopping for a new car having never driven one before.
And let’s not forget the fact that there will be cuddly cats in the room next door, so you have to account for not just separated space but separated wash sinks, separated mop sinks, separated trash receptacles and separated entry ways (one for the cats and one for the people).
Thankfully we have a great team at San Diego Food Service Design Group helping us out, and they have over 70 collective years experience in the commercial food service industry here in San Diego and across the country. So our plan went to the San Diego Health Department for plan check today, and we’ve told all our own cats to cross their toe beans that we’ve accounted for everything the health department will require of us!
Also happening over the last month, we’ve been working with our construction partner Jacor Construction to finalize the buildout of both the coffee cafe and the cat lounge. What material finishes will be used for the floors, counter tops, cabinetry, restrooms, storage spaces, how big will the windows be, what height is the bar counter, how much seating do we need and where will we get all our furniture… it’s like building a house! Which IS EXACTLY what we are building… and that brings me to a great Jim Rohn quote “whatever good things we build end up building us”.
[ctt template=”8″ link=”haU0x” via=”yes” ]”Whatever good things we build end up building us….” ~Jim Rohn[/ctt]
Cat & Craft is a home for the adoptable cats residing in our care while they wait for their forever family. But the space is intended to be a home for our community too. Maybe you can recall a time that you went to visit your friends house, and they offered you a cup of coffee or tea and then the two of you had this great connection and conversation… that is exactly how we want our space to feel when you come visit us. I can’t wait to watch connections happen as strangers become friends, and animals who were once cast aside begin to experience trust, love and comfort. This is what we are really building, and this is what ultimately builds us all.
Also happening over the last month, we’ve been working with our construction partner