Live from Brooklyn, it’s Caturday night!
Feline fans at the Brooklyn Cat Cafe recently unveiled a pawsh, custom-built terrarium inside the shelter’s new Montague Street home that Saturday Night Live set designers created specifically for its littlest furballs.
“We partnered with the design team from SNL, and they built us this incredible terrarium for the newborn kittens,” said Rachel Foster, a co-founder of the shelter staffed by volunteers with the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition.
But the crew from the popular NBC sketch show didn’t just create the glass-walled space for kittens to cuddle up in, Foster said. They also spruced up the entire rescue by adding a fresh coat of paint to the walls of the new location it moved to last December, after vacating the Atlantic Avenue storefront the shelter opened in back in 2016.
“They were here every day to help create and paint the entire cafe,” she said.
The cafe’s new, larger Brooklyn Heights digs between Montague Terrace and Hicks Street allow its owners to host even more community events, including film nights and yoga classes in the company of cats, according to Foster, who said she hopes to introduce even more programming, including seminars for youngsters and oldsters on how to properly care for the adoptable kitties the rescue temporarily houses.
“We can have yoga class in the back of the building while still having guests come in for adoption, we’ve never had the option to do both simultaneously,” she said. “We would love to have more partnerships around youth education, teaching kids how to properly care for cats, and we would love to work with elderly populations too.”
And shelter leaders are in the process of applying for permits to serve food and beverages prepared in the space’s new kitchen — a facility the old cafe ironically lacked — so they can offer patrons fresh treats in addition to the pre-packaged snacks and drinks they currently provide, according to Foster.
“We hope to get a barista in here soon, it would be a great place for people to gather and have a cup of coffee,” the co-owner said.
To date, cafe volunteers found some 99 cats furever homes this year, according to cafe reps, who said all kitties adopted from the shelter are either abandoned by their owners, dropped off by other local rescues, or saved from the streets of Brooklyn.
