Two women with a similar dream were thrown together by happenstance, or maybe fate, to plan something new for Amarillo. Kristi Briseno and Sara Cervantes have both had a love for animals and served as volunteers for various nonprofit rescue groups.
When Briseno heard Cervantes say she had a dream to start a type of “cat lounge” location, she knew she had found a partner for the venture. Both had done a preliminary business plan with each other’s names at the top as possible partners, they said at a recent interview. They had met previously at a women’s business meeting.
The idea for a cat venue had been floating around in their heads since around 2010, or even earlier.
“It would be impossible to do alone,” Briseno said. “Purpose gives power to a dream,” Cervantes said.
The two got together and came up with a basic plan and a name of Whiskers and Biscuits and got to work. Briseno had already started putting together the lengthy nonprofit process, so that gave them a paw up.
The purpose, in this case, is to help educate and empower the community to solve the overwhelming problem of overpopulation of cats and dogs existing in Amarillo.
“The city Animal Management and Welfare (department) get a bad name, but they really are doing all they can,” Briseno said. She said she worked there for a while and saw many of the good things they are doing. “It’s not the animals. It’s the people who are out there (the public) not taking care of animals. They don’t spay or neuter and just let them roam.”
The two hope to open a new kind of business where people can come in and see cats in their true element and where their personalities can come out.
“Some (cats) are shy, but some of them come out of their shell when they are out of a cage,” Briseno said. When people adopt, they don’t often see their true personality. They may want a quiet cat, but when the cat gets home, the cat is rambunctious, according to the two. There are many people who prefer a funny, lively cat, but some want an older cat to sit in their laps or just be there with them. And when they are free to roam, like they would in Whiskers and Biscuits, the cats’ true selves can come out.
The women envision students coming in and enjoying playing with the cats and doing videos and photos — and also possibly helping them with technical challenges they may have.
The hope is to have people come in and pay an entry fee of $10 for an hour of spending time being entertained by the cats and also receive a prepackaged drink and snack. They also plan to have special events, once or twice a month, to begin with, such as Painting with Cats, or trivia game nights. At the end of February, they hope to have Yoga with Kittens at their venue.
Announcements will be listed on their Facebook page, which has already jumped to 775 followers and growing.
“They can come in and wind down, take a break from school and books and play with the cats,” said Briseno. “It could be a home away from home for them.” Eventually, the plan is to help getting more spays and neuters done and possibly the trap and release (T&R) program to reduce the number of litters of feral cats.
With their business plan in place, the duo met with the Amarillo Planning & Zoning Commission and expected push back but were pleasantly surprised when everyone endorsed their dream and started to help them.
Briseno said they ran into some trouble with some realtors, however.
“The minute we said cats, they shut down,” Briseno said. “One of the larger realtors refused to show us anything, and I wrote them a nice letter explaining our mission and now they have shown us a few places.”
The duo knows the issues they could face — the renovation, the costs, keeping the rent paid and all of that — and are willing to take the risk to benefit the community and to educate people, especially youngsters, in how to take care of animals properly and to be good owners.
Cervantes in particular wants to go to young students’ classrooms and possibly have an information area and story hours for children. Their goal is not only to educate, but to also dispel old fears and tales about cats that have gone down through generations.
“Kristi is one of those people with an entrepreneurial mind,” Cervantes said. And Briseno credited Cervantes with being the “face of the operation and the one that gets out and gets people excited.”
Though Cervantes hoped to serve food at one time, as they do at various cat venues in larger cities such as Chicago and New York, they realized the difficulty in food service regulations that they would face. The P&Z group suggested they could serve pre-packaged wrapped food, and they are looking at having coffee in cannisters or packaged bobo tea that has been prepared elsewhere.
Interest from the community has been overwhelmingly favorable. They said they have gotten messages from all over about people who want to volunteer or help — including during this interview, where a manager of a coffee shop came over and talked to them about how she would like to volunteer. “Everyone is talking about it,” the manager said, explaining the process that they have to give back to selected nonprofits and urging them to apply.
Cervantes said one thing she wanted to have in the cat lounge was a purple room. “I worked with a nurse practitioner whose husband had killed her daughter and himself in their house. Her daughter was such an animal lover and loved purple, and I told the mother that I was going to open up a cat café and have a purple room and give the proceeds to someone wanting to go to medical school.”
The cats who would occupy the facility would be from rescues and be fully vetted. Depending on space, there would be around 10-15 adoptable cats, and money from the adoptions would go back to the rescue, they said.
They received generous donations from the Panhandle Gives campaign that spurred them on.
“We both wondered if we were doing the right thing and looking at the right locations and other doubts — wondering if it could work out until the Panhandle Gives money came in, and that gave us the boost we needed,” Cervantes said.
Presently, the two have a place in mind and hope to be able to seal the deal in a good area with lots of traffic.
Anyone interested in giving to the group or volunteering can get hold of them at whiskersandbiscuits.com or their website for Whiskers and Biscuits.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Women work toward mission to save more cats with new venue
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
