| February 8th, 2018

Tally Cat Cafe

By: journeymagazine

By| Carly Watson

Cats and coffee make an excellent combination. That’s why Courtney Yehnert, Katie Logue and Josh Kendrick decided to create the Tally Cat Cafe. With a great love for helping cats, the trio decided a cat cafe is just what Tallahassee needed considering the high cat population.

“It’s going to be a coffee shop with cats. We will have an adoption center completely walled off in an isolated room separate from the café. The whole idea is for people to come in, grab a coffee and snack, and with an hourly rate, you can go into the cat room and play with cats for an hour. You can bring in your coffee to be with the cats, or you can just stay in the café section and look through a window at the cats,” Yehnert explained.

Not everyone who would go to the café would want to be around the cats, according to FAMU’s Interdisciplinary Studies major, Lanae Sewell.

“The café idea all together is odd, but I love the cause. The option to be separated from the cats is a smart idea. I wouldn’t want to drink coffee around the cats, but if they had dogs, I would,” said Sewell.

Tally cat cafe has partnered with the Leon county humane society. The cafe will receive a number of cats from LCHS, after LCHS neuters, spays and vaccinates the cats. All the cats at the cafe will be socialized with one another before coming to the café, as well.  Customers will be able to adopt the felines they meet at the café.

“The cat café is a foster home. The cats will live in the café until they are adopted. However, if they get sick, they will be sent back to LCHS for medical attention until they are well,” said Logue.

While the Tally Cat Cafe founders do not only love supporting local cats, they also enjoy supporting local businesses. For this reason and the quality, they have partnered with Lucky Goat to supply the café’s coffee.

“Our mission is cats come first. We want to have more cats in Tallahassee be rehomed. We love that the café not only gives cats the opportunity to assimilate with other cats, but they can also have more exposure to humans,” said Yehnert.

Right now, the Tally Cat Cafe is under renovations, but once the cafe is up and running, the founders of the cafe plan to have fundraisers to raise money for LCHS and similar groups to further support for Tallahassee’s abandoned cats.

The Tally Cat Café is set to open this spring. It will be located at 2218 N. Monroe Street.