By Brendan Maher
Coffee is a substance both useful and familiar to many college students. Its property of warmth helps students to unwind and relax, while the caffeine can help them power through the last few paragraphs of a long paper due tomorrow.
Finding methods of stress relief is a pressing issue for students. With deadlines bearing down on them and exams coming up, finding an outlet for stress can be a matter of survival.
Fortunately, both coffee and stress relief are on sale at the new Cattfeinated Cat Café, located at 159 E. Otterman Street, which was formerly the Shalimar Bazaar, in downtown Greensburg.
The Review attended a media preview on Nov. 21 prior to the Café’s grand opening.
The coffee is fairly standard in variety, with everything from regular coffee to coffee drinks, like Americanos, lattes, and mocaccinos. However, the Cattfeinated Cat offers their own twist on presentation with names like “Ameowicano,” “Catte,” and “Meocha.”
Coffee drink sizes range from “Kitten,” to “Queen,” to ‘Tom.” The café also offers a number of non-coffee drinks such as hot chocolate, tea, and sodas, as well as assorted pastries from Peinetti’s in Jeannette.
The stress relief aspect of the business comes from a very unique feature: the café is home to a group of rescue cats. The cats are kept in two sperate rooms, one for mature cats, and one for kittens.
In order to enter the cat rooms, visitors must first sign a waiver, agree to a set of rules, and pay a fee. Shoes must also be removed before entering, so it is recommended to wear socks.
The rate is seven dollars for one hour with the cats, five dollars for thirty minutes, and three dollars for 15 minutes. All of the fees go toward supporting the non-profit organization Wayward Whiskers, which is located behind the business and supplies the cats for the café.
The cats provided are all available for adoption, as well.
Both the Café and the non-profit organization were founded and are owned by Katelynn Jones, a 2009 Saint Vincent graduate with a Bachelor of Science in biology.
“Our primary goal is to increase adoption rates for Wayward Whiskers and other rescues,” said Jones.
Jones stated that while the Cattfeinated Cat Café hopes to serve the entire community, it is an excellent place for college students especially.
“It’s a cool place to come study,” she said.
Jones explained that the café is the perfect place to come and relax for a student who is far from home and missing their feline companion, as the policies of most colleges do not allow students to have pets with them in their dorms.
When it comes to the specific rules of the café, the etiquette is fairly straight forward: the patrons must let sleeping cats remain asleep, and they are not to pick up or intentionally frighten the cats.
The cat rooms have a wide variety of cats, in terms of both physical traits and behavior.
The rooms also come equipped with a number of cat toys, which allows customers and potential adopters to see just how playful a specific cat may be.
Cat cafés are growing in popularity across the country and it is the Cattfeinted Cat Cafe that is this area’s first business to follow this model.
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