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01/25/2024 09:57 AMThere are so many temptations for a writer to make puns in a cat story—puns that might not be the cats’ paw-jamas, but nonetheless, are not im-paws-ible. Yes, these are all puns this correspondent should know better than to play around with. Nonetheless, they are hiss-terical, in fact, mew-sic to a reporter’s ears. So, paw-don me as we go on.
For cat enthusiasts, this is a purr-fect story about Essex resident Carla Gowrie, the owner and operator of All the Single Kitties on Main Street in Old Saybrook. Carla’s business is a new cat-egory of feline enterprise: a cat café. No kitten about that.
Carla opened All the Single Kitties in November of 2022. There are litter-ly a lot of purr-ty cat toys in a carpeted area that is paw-fect for engaging cats, with comfy chairs for visitors to sit in. The facility is licensed by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. (I will try to paws the puns for the moment.)
Visitors to the café can look over the feline population to select a cat to adopt or simply pay a fee, which s determined by how long the visit is, to play with the cats. The number of visitors at any one time is limited, so Carla suggests booking an appointment.
Profit, Carla says, is not important.
“I did not get into this to make money. I would love just to break even. I got into this because I love the cats,” she explains. “People just like to be with cats, and it is socializing for the cats, too, with no pressure to adopt.”
Still, Carla has a dream.
“I would like to be able to double or triple the number of cats who get forever homes,” she says. “The need has never been greater.”
Many cats, Carla points out, were adopted as pandemic pets and are now being given up or simply discarded.
“People just abandon cats,” Carla says.
Recently, All the Single Kitties received a litter of kittens that had been left in a sealed box behind dumpster at a McDonald’s.
As of a recent interview, 100 cats from All the Single Kitties had been adopted with four more adoptions in the works.
Carla emphasizes that All the Single Kittens is not a rescue shelter that accepts unwanted cats from the public. The cat café works with A Chance for Love Rescue, an organization in New Haven that supplies suitable cats to the Old Saybrook café.
Adoptions are arranged through the rescue organization, which ensures that adoptable cats are spayed, vaccinated, and have had all necessary tests. The rescue organizations also put microchips in every cat for identification.
Cat cafés started in Japan, spread through Asia, then to Europe and Canada, before appearing in the United States. Some five years ago, Carla was walking down a street in Washington, D.C. when she saw her first cat café.
Carla looked through a window at roomful of cats resting, playing, and doing what cats do. She was fascinated.
“I dragged my son and his girlfriend in,” she recalls.
Carla, who had worked in real estate for over two decades, was so impressed with the cat café that she wanted to open her own. It is, she says, the second one in Connecticut. There was a previous one in New Haven.
Carla says some cats are more easily adopted than others. Shy cats usually take longer. After a recent group of cautious cats from a hoarding situation came to All the Single Kitties, one of them, somewhat incongruously named James Bond 007, was particularly hard to approach.
“It took us a long time to get near him, but after a few months of sitting on laps, he was just adopted,” Carla says.
Black cats are also harder to place.
“Even black and white cats,” Carla adds.
However, Carla’s husband, retired insurance CEO Carter Gowrie, an avid sailor, gave her a bit of good news. On ships, particularly in Great Britain and Ireland, black cats are considered good luck.
As a child growing up in Canton, Carla loved horses and dogs, but she never had cats.
“My family supported my love of animals,” she says, adding there was one exception. “The family did not like cats.”
At the University of Massachusetts, Carla earned a degree in animal sciences with a minor in equine studies. Her introduction to cats came when she worked for a large animal veterinarian whose facility included an outbuilding with a number of barn cats. Still, Carla did not get a cat of her own until 14 years ago. Now, she has three cats, as well as one dog.
Carla knows that there is an unflattering description that is sometimes used to label cat fanciers.
“So far, no one has called me a crazy cat lady, at least not to my face,” she says. “But that would not bother me. I am passionate about cats.”
Carla says she is feline fine whatever she is called. There are no cat-astrophes in her life. She is an enthusiastic cat purr-son, and she feels that for her opening All the Single Kitties was kitten in the stars.
All the Single Kitties is located at 242 Main Street in Old Saybrook. For more information, visit www.allthesinglekitties.com, email carla@allthesinglekitties.com, or call 860-661-6092.