Winter is officially here and we're seeking comfort in snuggling cats (Mac and Simon!), wonderful books (see below for our latest display) and warm, delicious drinks like our orange cinnamon mocha (look at that perfect cinnamon swirl!). | |
Hello Friends,
We hope you're staying warm indoors in this nasty winter weather, ideally with a fuzzy friend, a good book and a steaming mug of your favorite hot beverage.
In this newsletter, in addition to more about our fabulous eight new cats (!!), we are happy to announce that we have opened up reservations for the month of February! Once again, they can be made on our website or through our Tock page.
Our delayed release of the February dates is due to the extra time we've taken to think through a couple of changes to our reservations, and we're excited to finally share them. Moving forward, reservations will be an additional $5 per guest ($40 total on weekdays, $45 on weekends), but will come with a $10 credit for each guest to use in our cafe! We know many of you purchased holiday gift cards and we want to assure you that gift cards purchased before January 23, 2025 will be honored and charged at the pre-February 2025 reservation rate.
As we continue to figure out how to make this business the best it can be, we appreciate the valuable feedback many of you have provided about your experiences in the space (please continue!).
Keep scrolling to learn more about:
- how to enjoy our space without a cat lounge reservation
- additional items from our winter menu
- our latest book display
- our eight new cats!
Happy reading, and we hope to see you soon!
Best,
The Team at A Sanctuary Cafe
| New Cats Genevieve and Lorelei | |
No Reservation? No Problem! Our Cafe and Bookstore Are Open to Everyone!
Having a tough day? You don't need a cat lounge reservation to get a mood lift from A Sanctuary Cafe. Our space was designed to allow all walk-in visitors to enjoy coffee, books and wonderful views of our cats through the "open to everyone" side: our cafe and bookstore, which also has a separate HVAC system for those allergic to cats!
Now more than ever, we believe in the power of community spaces to improve lives in ways large and small. We created A Sanctuary Cafe to give everyone a moment to pause and—we hope!—get a positive boost from our friendly staff, enticing menu and book selection, carefully curated aesthetic...and, oh yeah, also the cats! We strive to make our space welcoming, safe and accessible to all, and we would love for you to join us as often as you'd like and help us build a better community.
Here is how we suggest spending a perfect fifteen minutes at A Sanctuary Cafe.
Step One: Enter the space--welcome! Take a look at the latest offerings in our pastry case and our current drink specials, then place your order with our wonderful baristas.
| Step Two: Browse our curated book collection while your drink is being made. Talk books with our enthusiastic booksellers or quietly take them all in. Bibliotherapy is a real thing! | Step Three: Your order is ready! Find a spot at the standing counter close to Rica, who looks so soft and comfortable while she snoozes at the top of that cat tree. Sip some perfect espresso and marvel that Nussli118's nutrient-rich (and also vegan, gluten free, and no sugar added) lemon ginger square can be this healthy AND delicious. | Step Four: Continue to sip, nibble and admire cats (in this case, Rica and Elinor). | Step Five: Espresso and treat finished, reconsider buying a book for later today...and should you also get a croissant or cookie to go with it? | New and Delicious Cafe Treats! | It's finally here! Our decadent sipping chocolate is made with an in-house ganache we create using BOHO Chocolate's carefully sourced, stone ground cacao beans. We recommend pairing it with the fascinating book Wild Chocolate, which will give you a new appreciation for the exquisitely delicious heights that can be reached with properly grown and processed bean-to-bar chocolate! | Bragging moment: we have had multiple people tell us that our orange cinnamon mocha (using Atomic beans) is the best espresso drink they've ever had! It pairs beautifully with our orange chocolate Benjamin macaron (from Maca) and a sweet, vibrant picture book like The Bakery Dragon. | Our pastry case has some wonderful new things from French Press, including their incredible pear almond puff pastry, an irresistibly sweet and tangy cranberry orange walnut loaf and their extremely addictive cheese danishes. | |
Book Corner (Yay, Books!)
Meditations on Transition and Change
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Our new eight eating dinner together (clockwise from upper left): Violet, Matthias, Stanley, Lorelei, Genevieve, Theodore, Frederick and Fitzwilliam | |
Meet Our Eight New Cats!
Welcoming these new cats into our space has been such a wonderful experience. We are so impressed by how quickly some of them are adapting to the space and love learning more about their unique personalities every day!
All eight cats come from the same household in Florida, where they were part of an overcrowding situation*. We think that many of them are related to each other, so we’re calling them a family group, and they definitely act that way! Typically, cats from overcrowding or hoarding situations are separated into singletons and bonded pairs, so we’re very excited we got to keep so many of them together. We believe their transition to the cafe has been better because they are with familiar cats and can check in with and be reassured by each other's presence. A cat cafe environment has the potential to be a great fit for cats who are used to being around lots of cats (i.e., their "normal"), and we are doing everything we can to make this their perfect home!
* We use the term overcrowding (vs. hoarding) for situations when the caregiver has become overwhelmed by the number of animals in the household and their needs, but the cats are still socialized to humans (i.e., friendly) and only have minor health concerns. It can be a precursor to hoarding (defined as too many animals AND an inability to provide minimum standards of care, often leading to illness, physical harm and/or death) and the caregiver often requires help, but the intervention has occurred before the situation has become truly dangerous for cats and people. A big thank you to the Florida folks (especially Lori Jenkins) who rescued these cats, got them medical treatment and secured them transport to Massachusetts! Thank you also to Guardian Angels, who handled their state quarantine and transport to A Sanctuary Cafe. It truly takes a village!
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Clockwise from top: Matthias, Fitzwilliam and Violet share a strong family resemblance (and a cozy moment!) together.
The Importance of Playtime
Many of you arrive at our cat lounge expressing a wish to play with a cat, and we and our cats thank you! Making sure each of our cats have the best toys and interactive play experiences every single day is a top priority (ask us about our large cupboard of daily rotating toys!) and this is particularly important right now when we are integrating new cats into the space.
We are very big fans of Mikel Maria Delgado's Play With Your Cat! for its wonderful explanations of why play is important and how to entice even the least interested cat in a play session. For our new cats, we have observed the following play activities helping them become increasingly comfortable and confident in the space (and with new people!):
- expanding known areas (aka space exploration) while in pursuit of toys
- increased confidence from "successful" toy hunting (which also leads to positive associations with the space)
- interactive play that builds trust and positive associations with new people (wand toys are fun! people with wand toys are fun!)
- on multiple occasions, cats have played with visitors before they were ready for pets from visitors
| After considerable acrobatics and chasing, Matthias "liberates" a furry mouse from the end of a wand toy. | |
Theo making excellent use of a tunnel while in pursuit of one of our most popular (and simplest) toys: an orange string on a wand stick.
And Finally, Introducing the New Cats!
| Our Dashing, Chirpy, Height Aficionado Fitzwilliam aka "Fitz" (above) and Our Free-Spirited, Affectionate Super-Athlete Genevieve (below) | Our Gentle-to-Humans, Mighty-Against-Toys Frederick aka Freddy (above) and Our Inquisitive, Mischievous and Truly Classic Tabby Theodore aka Theo (below) | Our Snuggly, Confident Charmer Lorelei (above) and Our Extra Curious, Wand-Toy-Obsessed, Old Soul Matthias (below) | Our Bold, Enthusiastic-About-Everything (Really, Everything) Stanley (above) and Sweet, Petite (and Still Coming Out of Her Shell) Violet (below) | We already adore all of these cats (though have we ever met a cat we didn't like?), and we can't wait to see their personalities continue to blossom. We promise to give more detailed profiles of each in future newsletters. | |
Newsletter Archives
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Hooray for the Holidays! - December 21, 2024
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Cat Lounge Reservation Invitation and Fall Updates - November 2, 2024
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Opening Phases Have Begun! - July 16, 2024
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Construction and Hiring Updates: Part 2 - March 25, 2024
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Construction and Hiring Updates - February 18, 2024
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Major Construction Progress and Opening Update - January 28, 2024
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Now Opening February 2024 - November 3, 2023
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Things Are Coming Together! - July 12, 2023
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Things Are Happening! - April 2, 2023
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New Year, Grand Opening - January 6, 2023
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It’s Officially the Holiday Season! - November 16, 2022
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The Third Newsletter! - October 27, 2022
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The Second Newsletter! - August 29, 2022
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Our First Official Newsletter! - August 14, 2022
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In Our Next Newsletters
- More About the New Cats (and Originals!)
- In the News
- Private Events
Was this newsletter helpful? Is there something you want to see in the next one?
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