You can’t buy a mocha, a mimosa or a caffé Americano at the new Cattyshack Café. They’re not on the menu.
But here’s what you can get: A meow-cha, a meow-mosa and a caffé Ameri-gato.
They’re the same drinks, of course — just with a kitty-cat spin.
In fact, almost everything at the Gulf Coast Town Center cafe has a cat theme (and a golf theme, too). There’s cat-shaped food. A cat-sized golf cart with a scratch-able steering wheel. Even a bathroom sign urging visitors to “PLEASE WASH YOUR PAWS.”
And then there’s the main attraction: A room-full of cats where visitors can hang out and sip coffee for 50 minutes.
It’s Lee County’s first cat café, and it officially opens Thursday at Gulf Coast Town Center.
“We’re excited,” says Andrew Townsend, who owns the new café with fiancée Amber Redfern. “We’re just happy to finally be able to bring this to Fort Myers.”
Read more about Cattyshack: Cat café to open at Gulf Coast Town Center, first one in Fort Myers area
There are more than 100 cat cafés in the United States, Redfern says, but none of them are in Southwest Florida. Planet Tails in Naples closed several years ago.
Cattyshack had been tentatively scheduled to open in January, but permitting delays and the coronavirus kept pushing back their opening day. That hasn't stopped curious cat lovers from peering through the café windows, though — or sometimes just walking right in.
“People are just walking in off the streets,” Redfern says. “It’s obvious that we’re not open, but people walk in and they’re just so excited.
“They’re just so passionate. And to give those people an outlet and something to support in this scary time, it makes us feel good. And it’s good for the community as a whole.”
Now they’re finally opening the café Thursday after giving a handful of private tours last week. The cats — the purring heart of the whole operation — started arriving June 9.
The café will likely have a soft opening early this week, Redfern says, but it won’t have specific hours of operation.
Like other cat cafés, Cattyshack lets visitors drink coffee and eat while spending time with free-roaming cats (no cages). If the cats get stressed, they can flee through a small, cat-shaped door into a neighboring “escape room” that’s inaccessible to guests. That’s where the cats can use the litter boxes, eat, nap or just relax.
You can even adopt one of the cats, if you want. They all come straight from Gulf Coast Humane Society.
The timing is perfect, says the humane society’s executive director, Jennifer Galloway. It’s kitten season in Southwest Florida, and Cattyshack is another way to find homes for those new kittens.
“Their success is our success,” Galloway says. “Because the more successful they are, the more adoptions we’ll have. And we’ll be able to spread our message.”
Galloway says she’s excited about the partnership with the café.
“I think it’s an awesome concept,” she says. “It’s going to be fun for people.”
To gather research for their new business, Townsend and Redfern visited 20 cat cafes in six states and saw what worked and what didn’t work. Then they put those lessons to use in Cattyshack.
They wanted everything in their new café to be fun and memorable. That includes free-roaming cats in “The Mulligan Room” and cat-friendly décor with climbable palm trees, cat-themed books in a bookcase and a stuffed cat named Maudie on the “roof” of a faux clubhouse.
There’s always something to look at.
“Whenever people come here,” Townsend says, “we want them to want to take a photo.”
The café’s golf theme comes from Townsend’s love of the Chevy Chase movie “Caddyshack.” “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it," he told The News-Press last year. "And we both golf. We’re not the best …”
The 2,100-square-foot café is divided into two rooms: The main café on one side, where people order their food and drinks; and a cat room where 15-20 cats can lounge and frolic on catwalks, cat furniture and a putting green shaped like a paw.
For a $15 fee, people can take their coffee and food into the room for about 50 minutes and hang out with the kitties. Reservations are required.
"It’s a relaxing, calming environment," Redfern told The News-Press last year. "The cats are fun, and there’s toys and you can interact with them.”
The café sells coffee, beer and wine (including a full espresso bar), grab-and-go foods such as grilled-cheese sandwiches and pasta salad, and specialty drinks such as their “cereal milk lattes”— lattes made from milk that’s been soaking in Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes and other breakfast cereals. The fresh-roasted beans come from Fort Myers company Chocolatte’s Coffee and Roasting.
The various coffee drinks have cat-themed names such as The Tabby, The Calico, The Tuxedo and a soothing lavender latte called The Cat Nap.
To keep things hygienic, separate air-conditioner systems prevent the “cat air” in The Mulligan Room from mixing with the café air, Townsend says. Plus there’s an airlock-like vestibule between the two rooms.
Owning a café is an all-new adventure for the couple, who are both longtime animal lovers. Townsend is a former professional poker player who later earned a business-management degree from FGCU. Redfern is the bursar at Florida SouthWestern State College in Fort Myers — a job she says she’ll maintain .
They've signed a five-year lease in the former Fresh Planet Cafe at Gulf Coast Town Center, near The Cigar Bar and Outback.
Redfern and Townsend eventually plan to hold special events at the café , including cat yoga, cat crafts and painting with cats. The room will be available for group rentals.
Cattyshack Cat Café is located at 9901 Gulf Coast Main St., Suite D-140, in Gulf Coast Town Center, near Outback, Sports Clips and The Cigar Bar. To learn more, visit facebook.com/CattyshackCafe or cattyshackcafe.com.
Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (Facebook), @charlesrunnells (Twitter), @crunnells1 (Instagram)
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Lee County's first cat café, Cattyshack, opens Thursday at Gulf Coast Town Center - News-Press
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