PHX Cat Café

LOCATION: Phoenix, Arizona

OWNER: Carrie Schwartz

YEAR OPENED: 2020

CAT CAPACITY:

SUMMARY

PHX Cat Café is located in downtown Phoenix in the popular Roosevelt Row Art District. This vibrant area is home to art galleries, boutiques, breweries, coffee shops, restaurants, and bars. With a light beige exterior and red tile roof, PHX Cat Café is situated nicely within the Phoenix landscape. The exterior of the café features a black and white logo of an ear-tipped cat peeking out of a coffee cup. Inside the cafe, the cat lounge space is large and open with purple and light green shelving arranged to give cats space to climb, lounge, and hide. There are plenty of soft surfaces for cats to nest and a wall of wand toys for playtime. The space is beautifully and thoughtfully designed with a cat’s needs and comfort in mind.

In my interview with Carrie, it was clear that her engagement with the cat community started very early in her life. When she was in middle and high school, Carrie’s family fostered hundreds of cats, including mama kitties and bottle babies. Later in life, Carrie became involved in TNR at her condo, worked as a vet tech and in veterinary sales, and became a cat behavioral consultant. As part of her work at PHX Cat Café, Carrie oversees a foster network and is involved in TNR in the community, including rescue work with nearby brewery cats. In her words, “I know a little bit of every side of the coin.” Carrie’s background and experiences really illustrate the breadth of cat rescue and the many ways she supports cats in her community.

Carrie’s path to owning a cat café was not direct, and she had “no intention of opening a cat café, it kind of fell in my lap.” Carrie met former co-founder Missy Pruitt at La Gattara Cat Lounge and Boutique and during the pandemic they became business partners and moved to the current downtown location and re-opened as the non-profit PHX Cat Cafe. In 2023, Missy stepped away from her role at PHX Cat Café and Carrie is now the sole owner and CEO of the non-profit organization. When Carrie is asked for advice on opening a cat café, she responds with, “if you have $200,000 to put in a corner and burn, open a cat café.” Opening a cat café comes with many unexpected costs and delays, and it often takes a significant amount of time to make up for initial costs. Carrie credited her family for their role in getting the café up and running, “I fortunately have a very good support system.” Carrie’s dad and husband built the shelving in the cat lounge, and her dad volunteers weekly and cleans the bathrooms and litter boxes. Her family was able to give loans, give support, and continues to help maintain the café.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

In my interview with Carrie, two of the research findings stood out:

Research finding: Cat café owners start with a range of cat rescue and adoption experiences.

Carrie’s experiences with rescue work started early in life with her family’s involvement in fostering cats and kittens, and she built on those experiences later in life with TNR, and her work as a vet tech and in veterinary sales. Carrie also became a cat behavioral consultant and later expanded on her rescue work to include the business side of rescue as she designed, built, and created the non-profit PHX Cat Café. Carrie continues to expand her work in the community and is currently in the process of opening a second PHX Cat Café location.

Research finding: Cat café owners are involved in an enormous amount of uncompensated labor in their communities.

On the day of my interview with Carrie, she was wearing a t-shirt that read “I rescue cats, what’s your superpower?” This slogan perfectly captured Carrie’s energy and enthusiasm for cat rescue. As we talked, it became clear that she was deeply involved in her local community. Carrie and her board members at PHX Cat Café have been involved in numerous TNR efforts, including one that led to rescuing and adopting seventeen kittens from a single location. Carrie’s TNR and rescue work means she also oversees a foster network of bottle babies and kittens that are too young (under six months) to be featured at the cat café. Carrie also offers TNR meet up events, cat behavior talks, and she partners with local small businesses, including a comic bookstore, for adoption events. Carrie’s rescue work within the community, and the work of her board members, is truly impressive and continues to expand with new events always in the works.

On choosing or accepting shelter or community cats into a café