Animal house: 'Cat café' debuts in Westville
Photograph | Contributed
Mew Haven employees on break. (They do that a lot.)
Cinnamon rolls, cappuccino — and cats. Meet the newest food fad: the cat café, coming soon to the Elm City.
The very first of its kind in Connecticut, Mew Haven Cat Café opened its doors on Whalley Avenue in Westville Village earlier this year by husband and wife duo Angela and Michael Pullo, serving coffee and pastry with the hope of bringing a dozen kittens and cats up for adoption. And earlier this week, their wish was granted.
At its July 24 meeting New Haven’s Board of Zoning Appeals granted the couple the special exemption they needed to open Mew Haven. The cat café is the first to test the new zoning designation of a BA-2, created specifically for Westville Village.
Cat lovers and coffee enthusiasts alike are purring.
Before opening Mew Haven, the Pullos lived in New York City, where Angela worked for a marketing agency and Michael, who works in IT, reverse-commuted to Darien.
It was after Michael’s brother returned from a three-week stint in Thailand that the concept of a cat café crossed their minds.
“After my brother-in-law got back from Thailand, Michael popped the question. Did I want to open a cat café?” Angela Pullo said.
Nearly three years later and the Pullos have realized their dream of opening a café catering to both the cat- and caffeine-lover in the heart of Westville.
“We knew it was something we really wanted to do and New Haven just felt right to us. And Westville? It’s so friendly here — it’s really a community,” Angela Pullo said. “A community that welcomed us right in.”
International origins
So what exactly is a cat café, anyway?
Cat cafés originated in Taiwan two decades ago, with the very first opening in Taipei in 1998. Quickly garnering popularity throughout Asia and Europe, cat cafés have become something of an international phenomenon, with hundreds of feline-friendly bistros popping up across five continents.
The first North American cat café debuted in Montreal in 2014, slightly before Cat Town Café, the first of its kind in the United States, opened in Oakland. Manhattan’s very first cat café, Meow Parlor, made its debut in December 2014.
Cat cafés offer cat lovers a chance to enjoy the company and cuddles of kitties, plus all the attractions and amenities of a normal café, like the delicious cinnamon rolls made by Sweet Treats by Sonia.
Due to governmental food service regulations many U.S., cat cafés aren’t allowed to have food and cats in the same space. That’s also true for Mew Haven Cat Café.
Unlike most of the models in Asian and European countries, where the cats reside permanently at the café, Mew Haven will follow the North American model where the business offers satellite adoption facility for a local organization — in this case, Animal Haven.
Feline foster home
Mew Haven is a place where you can get your caffeine and feline fix all in one place. But it’s more than that.
A cat café is also the cats' foster home. It's a safe place for them to stay until they are adopted — a space where they can socialize with fellow cats and the humans that come to visit them. (Or just nap.)
The café also serves another key role in the adoption process, allowing would-be foster “parents” to really get to know the creatures and their personalities before committing to adopt them into their human family.
Working exclusively with Animal Haven in North Haven, a non-profit no-kill shelter, Mew Haven will host a dozen cats at a time. The café will accept adoption applications in-house before handing potential families over to Animal Haven to complete the process.
Settling into a space that formerly housed an optician's office at 904 Whalley Ave., Mew Haven is currently serving coffee and delicious sweet treats, like cannoli cookies baked by Moon Rocks in Hamden, or cat cupcakes baked by Jackie O Cupcakes.
But, the cats are coming. This month — August.
“It’s been tricky navigating this process, but we wanted the city to know we weren’t just two people with this idea,” said Angela Pullo. “We wanted to take the right steps, involve all of the right people and really lay the foundation for this type of business.”
Westville was already undergoing a re-zoning regulation process allowing for a greater mix of uses in the commercial district of the neighborhood. So the Pullos’ timing was perfect.
“There’s something about looking at animals that transports you away from the rest of the world,” Angela Pullo said. “You forget about that urgent deadline you have. You leave the rest of the world behind and just focus on the animal.
“It’s just really lovely.”
Reach Makayla Silva at news@newhavenbiz.com
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