Day Trip to Connecticut’s First Cat Café | Jessie Warshauer

In the walkable New Haven neighborhood of Westville, there is a locally owned café with thirty fluffy friends kneading attention from visitors. On a busy street lined with restaurants, the bright orange awning for Mew Haven Cat Cafe hangs. At this café, you are able to meet your coffee cravings and spend fifty minutes petting, playing, or enjoying the company of a multitude of cats. Angela and Michael Pullo opened Connecticut’s first cat café in 2018. The idea was first proposed by Michael in 2015, and after a lot of time and research, they hosted a surprise pop-up event for two weeks. They had over seven hundred visitors, and by the end of the event, five cats were adopted. This jump-started their desire to start their storefront café. Although they co-own the café, Angela, who is actually allergic to cats, runs the café while Michael continues to work his everyday job as a network administrator. However, Angela’s allergy does not deter her from her passion for running the café and providing a comfy place for cat lovers. A few guests even go home with more than just a cup of coffee. 

They are partnered with Halfway Home Rescue, a nonprofit organization that helps rehome abandoned and homeless animals. The café often has anywhere from fifteen to thirty cats at a time, all with different stories. Some were abandoned, others abused, and some of the literature stated that several of the current cats came from a hoarding situation with over sixty cats. In the past six years, Mew Haven has helped with over one thousand adoptions. 

On a recent Sunday, I visited the café with my brother, Sam, and my sister, Emma, who was looking to adopt a cat. The front houses the café where Emma, Sam, and I signed a waiver, paid the fourteen dollars per person for cat privileges, and ordered food and drinks. Their drinks included a variety of coffee options, matchas, and lemonades, as well as some specialty drinks, such as Mr. Kitty’s Pumpkin Spice Coffee. Their food options included baked goods like banana bread, Oreo cinnamon rolls, and even some gluten-free options like their raspberry white chocolate bread. Angela, with her dark hair pulled into a ponytail and her black Mew Haven Cat Cafe T-shirt, directed us to go “out and around. Second door with the orange awning,” pointing to the left. We entered through the second door, walking into an open room filled with dozens of roaming cats. 

The walls were covered in shelves for the cats to perch on; some curled into balls and took a nap while others munched on the open food bowls by the windows. In the middle of the room sat a clear box, filled to the brim with cat toys. My sister, having researched the cats beforehand, immediately searched for the cat whose story she connected with the most: a cat named Avalon, who was struggling with abandonment issues after his cat bestie had been adopted. Emma stroked Avalon’s short, tiger-striped fur, which reminded her of her own cat at home. 

Walking through the doorway on the left side of the first room connected us to a larger room with even more cats. Next to the doorway held a colorful lineup of all thirty cats. Each poster had a picture of the cat, a short story about their background, a description of their personality, and a hand-colored diagram of where they do and do not like to be petted. The colors on the diagram were green, signifying “yes”, yellow, meaning “okay/eh”, and red, reading “NO/I will BITE.” The room had large windows, providing natural light, and a nice view of the walkable street, where my brother, Sam, chose to sit in their polished white chairs. Within seconds, a white-and-grey cat jumped into his lap, quickly getting comfortable. Not only did the cats enjoy watching the action outside of the windows, but they even had a TV on the wall which played nature videos. A few actually sat on the table in front of the TV and intently watched.

The color orange is everywhere: the walls, the shelves, and even the cat houses. It holds a special meaning for Michael. “Mr. Kitty was Mike’s cat for fifteen years,” Angela said. “And I knew Mr. Kitty for a few years before he passed. So that’s kind of like in memoriam, the orange.” Angela believes that one of the main reasons people come to cat cafés is that it can be therapeutic to be around animals. Some people are also unable to have cats of their own, so the café is a great way to get their desired fix in. Over time, she noticed another target audience that frequented the café, saying that “there’s a lot of college students who were away from home, and they would come here and visit cats because they missed their own.” Although the cats were the main attraction, they were not the only appeal about the café, as “part of the thing also was the idea of community.” The community has played a significant role in the cat café’s success. Due to strict zoning laws, it took months for Mew Haven to be able to open their business. The strong community support was a big help in the process; they even had a petition with over one thousand signatures from people all over Connecticut. 

Angela runs multiple events at the cat café, such as cat yoga, tarot with cats, and quiet study hours. “Over the summer we had our Purrs and Pages, which is a quiet hour for people to bring their books and read, and that was really successful. All people wanted to do was hang out with the cats and read a book, and just chill out, whether or not they actually read the whole time.” For $240 an hour, cat lovers can rent out the café for their own special occasions, including birthdays, reunions, bachelorette parties, and they have even had a wedding take place! 

Although my sister did not end up signing any adoption forms that day, she will be returning to the café with her fiancé in hopes of finding a cat with a spunky personality to help get their own cat, Joey, out of his shell. 

Featured Image: A cat looking out the window of Mew Haven Cat Café / Photo Credit Jessie Warshauer