Don't Stress Meowt Cat Cafe
Why visit a cat café when I already live in one?
That’s what I snarked at my three cats after watching Charlie, the Double-Stuf Oreo of a tuxedo, use the dinner table like it was her personal Victorian-era fainting couch.
Despite being a card-carrying cat lady since smuggling kittens into my bedroom in a backpack, I hadn’t been to an official cat café until August. I wasn’t sure what to expect from don’t stress meowt, but my spirit felt lighter the moment I arrived.
Have no fur; separation of sanctuary and plate isn’t an issue here thanks to a glass partition that divides the café from a lounge where you can pussyfoot around with adoptable feline friends in a wonder-land of toys, trees, towers, bridges, and scratching posts.
Only a fellow cat lady could invent a place like this, I muttered— and I was right.
“I’ve always loved cats,” said co-owner Michaela Fitzpatrick. “I grew up caring for colonies of feral cats with my grandmother.”
Despite her lifelong obsession, she never intended to open a cat café. She and her husband Adam already run their own businesses — a private counseling practice for Michaela and a mechanical engineering firm for Adam — so the café is more of a passion project and Michaela’s way to “have 20 cats without having 20 at home.”
Relatable.
Surveying the café’s kitschy mix of kitty-themed gifts, décor, and activities felt like a stroll through the inside of my brain. One wall is reserved for local art revolving around two of my favorite themes: felines and feelings. In a little over a year, it’s rehomed more than 270 kitties through Safe Haven Rescue and donated more than $20,000 to local charities the couple support, including the Homeless Alliance and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.
“It was important to me to not only make the lives of the cats better, but to also impact the community beyond that,” Michaela said.
To a self-proclaimed pun-sultant, the sheer number of cat puns scattered throughout the menu was pitch purrfect: Americatos, Meowtcha, and a whole litter of Pawninis. Coffee is provided by local roasterie LEAP Coffee Roasters. Look for cat-shaped taiyaki pastries when the new Tulsa location opens later this year.
I guess it’s worth it to leave the house sometimes.
That’s what the trio glaring at me for coming home smelling like other cats made me think.
Such is the life of a cat lady.
Whether you’re looking for an adoptable new fur baby or a place to kick back on a Caturday afternoon, you’ll want to make a beeline to this feline funhouse sooner rather than later. In fact, why not meow?
> don’t stress meowt - Cat Café, 1900 Linwood Blvd., Suite 300, Oklahoma City, (405) 467-4512, dontstressmeowt-catcafe.com/, Lounge visits must be made by appointment on the website.
