For my Connecticut girlies, it must be exciting to find out that we have a cat cafe in our state! Located in New Haven, the Mew Haven Cat Cafe consists of a lounge with all of their adoptable kitties and a cafe where you can get your pastry and coffee fix. They also host a variety of special events every month ranging from yoga with cats, tarot readings with cats, crochet/knitting with cats, painting with cats, and more. A day trip from UConn and most areas of the state, they also have three-hour work/study sessions which could be the perfect option for a stressful weekend when you need to get work done! Recently, I joined them for the most purrfect yoga class.
The yoga
We did yoga with Kristin Longenecker at the ripe hour of 10 a.m. on Sunday, March 24, 2024, and it was amazing! While it is recommended to bring a mat or a towel, Kristin had extra mats and yoga props on hand for all participants of the class. The flow was perfect for beginners along with more practiced yogis like myself. The tickets for cat yoga were about $40 each, including the hour-long flow class and a fifty-minute ticket to spend in the cat lounge afterward. I have done yoga with goats as well as dogs before I took this class with cats, and let me be the one to say that this was a much calmer experience! While there were only about 10 kitties in the class, Kristin shared how much more chaotic it can get when there are normally around double the amount of cats.
The Cats
The cat lounge is set up beautifully with many different places to sit as well as many cat towers and scratching posts for the kitties to explore. When you enter, you must sanitize your hands and be careful to enter as the cats are inclined to escape! Boxes of toys sit around the lounge for visitors to use to play with the kitties. To add to all these aspects, there is a wall with photos of each cat and their biographies to give visitors a little more information about each one. If you connect with a cat, never want to leave, and just wish you could leave with one, they are all adoptable through Halfway Home Rescue with their adoption fees listed on each cat’s biography.
The food and coffee
We had the Oreo cinnamon roll and a caramel iced latte with whole milk, and we enjoyed these treats delivered to us in the lounge after the yoga class! I am not quite sure whether or not you can order drinks to be ready before you go in, but it was super cool how our food and drinks were delivered to us. I was able to microwave my cinnamon roll in the microwave in the cat lounge, and utensils were provided in the cabinets around. The whole cafe and lounge combination had a very homey vibe and with the drinks being brought to us, we did not have to worry about losing time with the cats. See their menu here!
Overall, my experience in New Haven at the cat cafe was a blast, and it was so relaxing to get away from busy campus life. I highly recommend their special events to maximize your time with the cats and do something fun or relaxing such as yoga, painting, and more. I highly recommend visiting Mew Haven Cat Cafe as well as spending time in the surrounding downtown of New Haven to visit Pistachio Cafe, Bark and Vine, and much more!