Originally published 2/27/2024 Rapid City Journal by Tanya Manus. Photos by Matt Gade
Rapid City’s newest coffee shop, Coffee and the Cats, hopes to be a purrfect retreat for coffee and cat aficionados.
Twin brother and sister Lukas and Claire Linn decided to channel two of their lifelong loves — animals and good coffee — by opening Rapid City’s first cat café, a coffee shop for cat lovers. Coffee and the Cats is slated to open in April.
The café will have dining space for people and a menu featuring local coffees, breakfast and lunch items. The Linns are collaborating with their mother, Jessica, who is completing a culinary arts degree. The three are developing a menu with such treats as French macarons, gourmet muffins and desserts.
“Our mom is helping us craft homemade recipes. We’re going to make it unique and interesting, and have options including gluten-free and dairy-free,” Lukas said. “This has been a great way for Mom to express that passion [for food].
“We’re going to try to focus on creative artisanal cuisine with quality local ingredients. We’ll have mocktails, soup flights, pastries, and specialty lattes themed on cat breeds,” Lukas said. “Once you have your drink and your snack, you can hang out and look through a large Plexiglas window to look at the cats [in the Kitty Cove].”
The café’s dining area will have a view of adoptable cats and their antics in the adjoining Kitty Cove. The cats will be provided courtesy of the Humane Society of the Black Hills.
Four cats at a time will spend their days in the Kitty Cove. People can reserve time slots with the cats in the Kitty Cove — one hour for $10. Proceeds will be used for cat food and cat care. For the safety and comfort of cats and humans, the Linns posted an etiquette list on their Facebook page that offers guidelines about how to interact with the cats. It’s recommended reading before people schedule their first visit to the Kitty Cove. Unsupervised children will not be allowed in the Kitty Cove, though the Linns hope to offer some child-friendly hours for kids and parents.
The new cat café is slated to open in April.
Lukas and Claire share a lifelong passion for the arts, and that too will be part of Coffee and the Cats. Customers can browse feline-themed art and purchase merchandise including cat-motif tablecloths and the café’s line of t-shirts and stickers.
“We want to provide vending opportunities for local craftsmen and artists,” Lukas said.
The Linns credit their parents, Eric and Jessica, for nurturing interests that led Lukas and Claire to open a cat café.
“Ever since we were young, our parents would take us to coffee shops,” Lukas said.
Childhood visits to their grandparents’ ranch started the Linn siblings’ love of animals.
“They always had a ton of cats. It fostered this passion for cats and helping animals,” Lukas said.
Around age 10, Lukas and Claire started volunteering at Humane Society of the Black Hills.
“We always had a huge passion for helping out with animals,” Lukas said.
Visits to cat cafes in other cities — and the lack of one locally — further sparked the Linns’ interest in starting a cat café in Rapid City, Claire said.
Coffee and the Cats will be at 315 B East Saint Patrick St., a few minutes’ drive from the Humane Society of the Black Hills. Thanks to the partnership between the Linns and HSBH, the cats at Coffee and the Cats can be adopted through HSBH.
“Our hope is that we can sponsor cats and adoption fees will be covered,” Lukas said.
Inside the cat café, a coffee shop for cat lovers, four cats at a time will spend their days in the Kitty Cove.
Jerry Steinley, executive director of Humane Society of the Black Hills, said the Humane Society partners with many organizations and businesses locally and is excited about this new joint effort with Coffee and the Cats.
“We’ll provide four cats [at a time],” Steinley said. “There’s an opportunity for special adoption events. There’s an opportunity for fun events like yoga with cats … and kids camps in the summer. [The Linns] are open to new things and having fun. We’re excited.”
The springtime opening of Coffee and the Cats coincides with kitten season, when Steinley said the Humane Society sees an increase in its kitten population.
“We do get more kittens. People find them — sometimes a stray has kittens under somebody’s deck. We do get some kittens and [mother cats]. Some we keep; some we send to foster homes until they’re old enough for adoption,” Steinley said.
Meanwhile, the Humane Society currently has about 50 cats of all ages in need of new homes. Adoption fees range from $50 for older cats to $150 for kittens.
For updates about the opening date of Coffee and the Cats, follow facebook.com/coffeeandthecatssd and coffeeandthecats.sd on Instagram, or go to coffee-and-the-cats.com.
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