Cat Cafe at the Library
- Emily J Hoch
- Oct 30, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 5, 2018
Capitalizing on the popularity of cats through library programming
Cats are all the rage right now. The Walker Center for the Arts has their annual Internet Cat Video Festival, and cats like Maru, Lil Bub, and Grumpy Cat have been elevated from mere pets to Internet superstars. How can libraries get in on the cat trend? The answer is through programming. I brought cats to my library by hosting a free and enormously successful cat cafe complete with cats available for adoption, drinks, cookies, and crafts. The event turned up a crowd of 581 people over a two-hour span of time, 85% of which were millennials.
How can libraries get in on the cat trend? The answer is through programming.
Cat cafes are cafe spaces in which customers pay to sip coffee while playing with adorable, adoptable cats and can be found in major cities around the world. Though popular, cat cafes are not yet ubiquitous, which means they still have a novel ring to them and appeal to both animal lovers and trendsetters. By making the program free and at a public library, the cat cafe becomes a cool, all-ages, and accessible event and positions the library as innovative and on trend.
Pulling off a Cat Cafe at the Library
As with any big, stand-alone event, it's important to consider how the structure of the event will affect those who attend. For instance, what will attendees do once they arrive? Will lines be awful? And if so, how can you alleviate some of the boredom that accompanies waiting around? I tackled these questions concerns by dividing the cat cafe into different spaces: a cafe and craft setting in which attendees could sip coffee or lemonade, create a cat toy, or color a cat-centric coloring sheet and the room where visitors actually got to play with our 10 adoptable cats. By hosting this event in two separate spaces, we created a waiting room with activities, and a highly controlled space that catered to the felines' needs.
What will attendees do once they arrive? Will lines be awful? And if so, how can you alleviate some of the boredom that accompanies waiting around?
In addition to creating these two structured spaces, I organized the event further by requiring that everyone who saw the cats, had to have a ticket and registered time to see the animals. Tickets were passed out on a first-to-come, first-to-be-served basis. Ticketing the event not only gave me a way to not only control how people moved through the event, but also helped me put the cats' welfare first by not overwhelming them with swarms of people.
The downside of ticketing upon arrival which limited time at such a popular event, was that I ran out of spots to see the cats. As an alternative, we offered people the cafe goodies, the option to make a cat toy or color, and provided information about alternative ways to interact with the cats who were here today via upcoming events and adoption hours at local pet stores.
Expanding from the Cat Cafe
The Cat Cafe was a fantastic, and well received event that generated lots of excitement in our community. The event went viral on facebook mere hours after we had posted it, reaching 71K people with 3.7K people responding. We took the opportunity to interact with our Facebook reach by asking users to post a picture of their own cat on the page's feed. We also used the popularity of the event to cross-promote other events that were relevant to our audience members' interest in animals.
The huge success of the Cat Cafe taught me millennials love animal programs. When I do this event again, I will make the Cat Cafe the finale in a series that centers on animals, animal welfare, and community organizations dedicated to providing for animals.
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