Catitude Café, a new cat cafe in downtown Goshen, has been open for three weeks now. The cafe is the first of its kind in Elkhart County.
Brenda Summers ’93, Catitude Café owner, said, “I really want people to come in here and just be able to feel. If they need quiet, if they need space, there is ample [room]. It is a calm and relaxing environment.”Summers wants people to find comfort in the lounge. She said it is okay to just go in there and only pet cats for a bit.
She wanted to make the lounge a comforting space, hoping students and teachers could find both peace and relaxation after a rough time at school or to work on assignments in a new environment. With that in mind, Summers made one of the rooms into a study area with a table and some cat beds.
Throughout the lounge there are multiple rooms to choose from. One even includes a little library with bookshelves full of books about cats.
Summers hopes to start a story time or read-out-loud in the library room for kids in the community. The story time sessions wouldn’t only serve the children, but the cats as well. Summers said, “the cats love to be read to.”
“I read ‘Millions of Cats’ to them the other day. There were no cats on the couch when I started reading, but by the time I was done there were four,” Summers recounted.
The cats of the café range in age, size and color. The lounge currently has 17 cats, just one shy of the maximum capacity. There are a few five month old kittens and two seven year old cats.
Upon entering the cat lounge there are a list of rules to follow: “no picking any cats up, letting the cats eat and drink without being disturbed, no running, no raised voices and never pull on the cats’ tails.”
The cats are able to rest on your lap and customers can gently encourage the cats to play if they are found resting.
All of the cats at Catitude are available for adoption, except for one named Willow, who is already adopted and is staying in the lounge until Friday.
Before Summers arrived, a staff member gave a brief tour of the building and introduced the cats. While showing the lounge, one of the cats, Sunny, had jumped on her. The staff member explained that she was allergic to cats, but the air purifiers in the building made her allergies more bearable. However, she still needs to take some form of allergy relief medication.
The staff member also said the air purifiers also helps with getting rid of bacteria, viruses and odor to “keep the cats healthy.”
The lounge did not have many places for the cats to jump up high. That is because the building is in historic downtown and the main walls are brick and plaster.
Summers had the walls put in to separate the gift shop from the lounge and they are not flush with the ceiling. Adhering floating cat beds to the wall would allow for the cats to jump into the gift shop.
“That is the exact opposite of what the wall was put in for,” Summer said.
The cats of Catitude are provided by Here Kitty Kitty Rescue in Elkhart, Indiana. Within their first two and half weeks, the lounge reported seven cats being adopted. One of the cats, Gilbert, had arrived on Sunday morning and was adopted that same day. Summers said, “I thought to myself, [Gilbert] is gonna go quickly. He went a lot quicker than I even expected.”
When Summers and adopting customers fill out adoption paperwork, she joked that a lot of the cats gather and try to “help.”
