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By Angela Brown

Aim to boost adoptions

Meadow Lake Library to host first Cat Café

Jan 26, 2024 | 2:00 PM

Meadow Lake Library is partnering with the Meadow Lake and District Humane Society to host its first-ever Cat Café.

The event will take place on Jan. 31, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the library.

“We have partnered with the Meadow Lake Humane Society for different events, but this is the first time we’ve done the cat café. We’re pretty excited,” said Library Programming Clerk Tawn Marshall. “We are going to have cats and kittens of all ages from the humane society. We’re going to have our back room set up where people can just get cosy and socialize. They can sit on the floor and cuddle with the kittens, or cosy up to a table.”

People can also play board games, and enjoy a coffee, tea or hot chocolate. A couple of years ago the library had a few kittens over for a book launch, so this will be something different.

“The last time the Humane Society had some kittens here, we kept them all contained into one room,” Marshall said. “Kids and families, and anybody who is here got to just cuddle up. The kittens came in after they had been running and playing, and curled up on a few laps while people were reading. It was just lovely.”

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All the cats and kittens taking part in the Cat Café will be available for adoption. The Humane Society will also be accepting donations during the event.

Humane Society board member Desirée Lalonde said Marshall first had the idea for the cat cafe, so she is glad to see it going ahead.

“We’ve been talking about doing this for a bit and we’re finally making it happen,” she said.

Lalonde hopes having cat days at the library will be a regular event if it proves popular.

She added the cat café is good for cats at the shelter and in foster care to have an opportunity to socialize with people and other cats.

“It makes them adjust better to adoption if they’re exposed to a number of different people,” Lalonde said.

Humane Society president Jeff McCallum said the cat café is not a new idea, but it would be “new to us in our region.”

He hopes the event sparks some interest in people to adopt more animals at the humane society.

“Any exposure we have for our cats in care is good, especially at community centres and hubs like the library [is helpful],” McCallum said. “The hope is to get adoptions moving. First-hand contact with the animals is always the goal.”

The humane society will bring just a small handful of cats and kittens as a trial run for the first cat café to see how well it goes.

“It’s not great to have too many cats in one space at one time in case everyone doesn’t always want to get along,” McCallum said.

Over at the humane society, the facility is currently at capacity again, with about 18 cats in the shelter and a similar amount in foster care. McCallum noted that the situation hasn’t changed much in about the last year and a half. For dogs, the shelter is currently close to capacity, with about 12 dogs in the facility and about six in foster care.

McCallum said he’s glad to see the Humane Society volunteers and the Meadow Lake Library are together thinking of new ways to give the shelter animals some more exposure in the community to increase their chances of being adopted.

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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW