The Beatles - George, John, Paul and Ringo - in residence at Catnap Café. Photo: Supplied
There’s no snoozing on the job for the owners of the South Island’s only cat café, who this week are celebrating five years in business.
Alyssa O’Connor and Nate Ball opened Catnap Café in central Christchurch suburb in 2018, following a successful crowdfunding campaign.
While Catnap has all the usual coffee and food on offer, having cats on tap is the café’s USP, Ball told Jesse Mulligan.
“We have a room with a bunch of rescue cats that people can come and meet and hang out with, grab a coffee, grab a snack, or then fall in love with [the cats] as well, and adopt.”
Catnap has successfully enabled the adoption of 150 cats since opening, but Ball said there was no pressure on café patrons to leave with a furry friend.
“You can absolutely come and just hang out… most of the people are just coming to spend some time with a roomful of cats, which is pretty good therapy for for this day and age. It's nice to just take it easy hanging out with some cats for a while and just let that stress kind of melt away.”
Ball said running the café was more work than he and wife Alyssa had anticipated, but they wouldn’t change a thing.
“There’s a lot of cleaning. Lots of learning as we go, but it’s hard work. I think at the start, we were doing 100-hour weeks and you know, thankfully we're down to 60-70 hour weeks now, what with running the cafe during the day and all that sort of admin and maintenance and stuff after hours, but it's good work.”
He said they were grateful for support from their regular customers, who enabled them to keep the business afloat during Covid lockdown closures.
“Given Covid and everything, we had a lot of really good support during that time. If it wasn’t for that core customer group, we wouldn’t be here.”
Gizmo in residence at Catnap Café Photo: Supplied
While most of the café’s cats are in residence for a month or two, regulars are very familiar with permanent residents Suzy and Gizmo, who have been at Catnap since the start. Current cats of Catnap include a bashful bunch nicknamed The Beatles.
“They’re a little too shy to come into the main room, so we've got a little separate room that they're hanging out in. They've definitely come out of their shells a lot because they've been together.”
The café works closely with Cat Rescue Christchurch to manage the adoption process, strictly vetting all applicants.
“It’s long hours, a lot of work,” Ball said. “But at the end of the day, there are cats sitting there waiting for us to go and chill out when we're finished. So it definitely helps.”
