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Staff meeting
Pounce co-owners Annaliese Hughes (left) and Ashley Brooks cuddle with some of their adoptable felines at their Charleston cat cafe.
Photo courtesy of Pounce Cat Cafe + Wine Bar
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All in the family
Cat enthusiast Anne Huggins, a Pee Dee Electric Cooperative member from Mullins, enjoys visiting Pounce Cat Cafe + Wine Bar in Charleston when visiting her daughters. “I love that they get all this attention,” Huggins says of the former strays now available for adoption.
Photo by Cindi Ross Scoppe
It’s a sunny afternoon in late February, and tourists stop and do double-takes as they stroll past a storefront window on Charleston’s Meeting Street where a couple of teenagers are sprawled out on an ample window seat scattered with fluffy pillows and slumbering tabbies.
Inside, the space is chic and serene, with plush gray sofas and chaises and velvet-topped stools in soft pink, exposed-beam ceilings and tidy hardwood floors. Sisters Daleigh Huggins and Kelby Huggins are sharing a sofa with Alvin, a black-and-white shorthair whose profile picture on the cafe’s Facebook page says he “loves to cuddle, will want to hang out in your lap, and will start following you around and meowing.”
Welcome to Pounce Cat Cafe + Wine Bar, South Carolina’s original cat cafe.
Cat cafes are the hottest new thing in the feline world. The first one opened in 1998 in Taiwan. The idea, which took off when it migrated to Japan six years later, was that cat lovers would be willing to pay to spend time with cats, thus providing income for the proprietor, who could thereby afford to provide a home for the cats. By 2014, cat cafes had swept Europe and spread to the United States, where the focus shifted from housing to adoption. Today, according to meowaround.com, there are 125 in North America.
Pounce co-owner Ashley Brooks was attending graduate school in Washington when a cat cafe opened. “They were hiring, and I thought, ‘I have to work there; this is my dream job,’” she recalls.
After working at Crumbs & Whiskers for three months, she finished her degree, came home to South Carolina and convinced Annaliese Hughes, her best friend from her undergraduate years at the College of Charleston, to launch Pounce, the 15th U.S. cat cafe, and the first in the South, she says.
They had been open only 60 days when they reached their first-year goal of finding homes for 100 cats. By the end of their second year, they had opened a second location, in Savannah, and found homes for more than 1,000 cats. They’ve often cleared out the inventory of the Charleston Animal Society and had to import cats from shelters in other cities.
“Most people come here because they’re like, ‘Oh, a cat cafe, I’ve never been to one before,’” Brooks says. “They want to have the experience, and they end up falling in love. The great thing about downtown Charleston is that we give the cats visibility they wouldn’t have otherwise. You can go shopping and end up having a glass of wine with a cat.”
Daleigh Huggins, a school psychologist and Berkeley Electric Cooperative member who lives on Johns Island, scheduled an hour at Pounce (reservations highly recommended) when her sister and parents came to visit from Mullins. Anne Huggins, a Pee Dee Electric member whose daughters call her a crazy cat lady, says she’d love to take home one (or two, or three) if her husband would let her. Absent that, she’s happy to shower the cats with affection and look forward to visiting the next time she’s in town.
“I love that they get all this attention,” Anne says. “And it’s good for people who love cats but don’t want to have their own.”
The 900-square-foot cat lounge is strikingly clean—no dust kitties rolling around like tumbleweeds, no evidence of digestive issues—although Brooks says that’s not always the case. At night, employees put out food and water and extra litter boxes for the cats, “and they have free run of the space until we come back the next morning, and it usually looks like there was a frat party.”
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Get There
Pounce Cat Cafe + Wine Bar, Charleston
Location: 283 Meeting St., Charleston. On the peninsula, just east of the College of Charleston.
Hours: Noon to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
Admission: $15 for a beverage and an hour in the cat lounge. No humans younger than 12 admitted.
Details: (843) 212-5500; pouncecatcafe.com. Reservations recommended. There are usually 15 to 20 cats in residence, all adoptable.
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Pounce Cat Cafe + Wine Bar, Savannah
Location: 404 W. Broughton St., Savannah
Hours: Noon to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
Admission: $15 for a beverage and an hour in the cat lounge. No humans younger than 12 admitted.
Details: (912) 777-6181; pouncecatcafe.com.
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Finding a new home
Shortly before this issue went to press in early April, two additional S.C. cat cafes—Catitude Cat Cafe in West Columbia and Organic Cat Cafe & Music Lounge in Greenville—announced they were temporarily closing to seek new facilities. For updates, visit catitudecatcafe.com and organiccatcafe.com.