SAVOUR A COFFEE AND CUDDLE A CAT
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the Starphoenix talks to Sydney Sylvester about opening Saskatoon's first cat café together with her fiancé Casey Swatlowski.
Sylvester, 27, has always adored cats and currently owns four rescues. She first saw the concept of a cat café in Denver, Colo., and knew she could start something similar in Saskatoon.
The duo have worked tirelessly to renovate their new space on 2nd Avenue and expect to open to the public later this month.
Q What will your customers experience at the Purrfect Cup?
A When you first come in our main entrance door, you'll see all of our coffee machines and baked goods, and stuff that we're getting from local businesses in Saskatoon. That will be on display. So you can pay for a hot drink or cold drink, baked goods or whatever. To get into the cat area, we charge an $8 flat rate and then you're in there for however long you want.
That money just helps pay for cat food, cat litter, any toys, and such, because the humane society in Battleford, the partner that we're with, we are not charging them for any of the supplies. They are not supplying us with anything, we're not billing them. We are completely footing the bill for all of the cats here, aside from the vet bills.
We're hoping that with the turnout of people who are unable to have cats at their home, or maybe they're allergic so they just want to see them from time to time, we're hoping we'll have enough supporters in Saskatoon to keep the venture going.
Q Can people adopt these cats?
A Yes. They will be available for adoption through the Battlefords Humane Society. And what is great is you can fill out an application online, so you don't have to go to Battleford. You don't have to visit their location to fill anything in. I think you can also pay online or by e-transfer. But we'll basically get confirmation that the cat is adopted and ready to go, with some customer photo ID and then we can hand over the cats straight from here.
Q Why is it important to you to have cats available for adoption?
A We hope that we can educate people coming into the café. A lot of people think that getting a kitten for free online might be the cheapest way to go about it. But when you think about the veterinary care that's required for kittens and even adult cats when it comes to vaccination and spaying and neutering, the humane societies actually do a lot of work to provide animals at a cost (to the buyer) that is still less than what the humane society has put into the animal. So we hope that people will understand the cost of the cats at the café may be more because they have had more care and more vaccines.
Q Is Saskatoon ready for a cat café?
A A bunch of COVID restrictions started lifting these past few months so that's when we decided this was the best time to get the ball going. I think it will be nice coming out of COVID, or at least living with it now, having a new fun experience in Saskatoon to start the spring off with something fresh and exciting.
We decided to launch our Facebook page around the
beginning of March. Now we are up to 1,500 likes and around 400 on our Instagram. But, we've talked to quite a few people and just the number of people who have heard about us through various means, whether it's other news articles or Facebook or one person mentioned to us that we were on Reddit. We didn't even know we were on Reddit, but I guess they're talking about us there, too.
Q What's on your menu?
A Our teas and coffees will be
provided by Mcquarries Tea & Coffee Merchants on Broadway. And we are getting our baked goods right now from the Nutana Bakery, also on Broadway. But we'll have to reach out to a few other bakeries that specialize in vegan and/or gluten-free food. We haven't quite finalized our menu just yet but we will hopefully shortly. At the current moment we are focusing on espresso-based drinks — so lattes, cappuccinos and what not. But for our iced teas, we are hoping to use herbal blends from Mcquarries to make nice, refreshing and fruity iced teas for summer.
Q What do you love the most about being able to open a cat café?
A The thing I'm looking forward to the most is helping adopt homeless cats to loving forever homes because Saskatoon and area do have stray cat problems and I feel like there are a lot of negative associations with cats. Having the ability to come to a café and meet a cat and interact with it prior to taking it home, is big, especially since the SPCA is quite far out of the city. People now have something close by where they can interact with the cats. That's going to be the most rewarding thing.
Have you recently started or moved a new business or non-profit organization in Saskatoon? We want to hear your story. Please email drice@postmedia.com