(CLEVELAND) If cats and dogs are supposed to be mortal enemies, then how did Cleveland end up with a dog bar and cat cafe within two miles of each other?
Both affoGATO Cat Cafe on Starkweather Avenue and a dog bar called Taps & Tails on Train Avenue have had their doors open in the city’s Tremont neighborhood for less than two years, collectively. While they may not be doing much to bridge the cat-dog divide, they do provide guests with unusual environments to play with or even adopt their pet of choice, a service that the staff at both establishments believe helps humans and animals alike.
For all their novelty neither dog bars nor cat cafes are new trends. Cat cafes, where patrons can purchase a drink and then wait for a friendly mouser to mosey up, have existed in various forms in Japan since the mid-2000s. And dog bars — essentially dog parks that serve beer — started gaining prominence in 2019.
Eddie Crespo, affoGATO co-owner, plays with the cats on days when the store is closed, but not every cat has the same penchant for play.(Collin Cunningham/NewsBreak)
Both have taken root in major cities throughout the country, and it’s likely that more will be coming to Cleveland in the future as the pandemic sends people searching for new outdoor hangouts. So it’s nice to get a benchmark of how the Sixth City’s animal hangouts build on previous concepts before new ones move in.
Toe beans and coffee beans
A co-owner of affoGATO, Mandy Miller said her coffee shop opened in January 2019 but closed for several months during the onset of COVID-19. A year prior, Miller, her boyfriend Eddie Crespo and his sister, Lea Crespo, put the wheels in motion to open a cafe that would let people spend time with cats — all of which are up for adoption — while helping to alleviate overcrowding at local animal shelters.
Now, in 2021, it’s safe to say that they’ve succeeded.
“We directly have helped with 652 adoptions,” Miller answered with barely a moment’s hesitation when asked how many cats her cafe has helped. “And that’s not including cats that we directed people towards at the [Animal Protective League] or things like that.”
The cafe operates out of a wide, single-floor storefront in Tremont’s bar and restaurant-heavy business district, near popular breakfast spot Lucky’s Cafe. Upon entering, guests are greeted with a familiar coffee shop counter and seating, all granite and hardwood, but beyond that is Cleveland’s premiere feline hangout.
At any given time, Miller said affoGATO’s lounge is home to between 15 and 20 cats, each available to take home and listed on the cafe’s website, which also hosts Twitch streams to show off the cats. Her staff works with the Cleveland Animal Protective League to serve as a pipeline between homeless cats and caring families, giving them a more comfortable environment to interact with cats than a typical shelter.
Even if someone doesn’t want to adopt, they can still spend time with the cats on hand for $11 per half hour or $75 per half hour for a party of eight. Since adoption fees go directly to the APL, the affoGATO’s cover charge pays for cat food and other more traditional operating expenses.
The adoption board at affoGATO helps Miller and the other co-owners keep track of which cats have been in the cafe the longest.(Collin Cunningham/NewsBreak)
Drinking like a dog, with dogs
Over at Taps & Tails, untreated wood and stainless steel beckon dog owners to sit, stay and play in a very different atmosphere, which sports a more rough and rugged but still homey presentation, while a 2,100-square-foot outdoor dog park is littered with obstacles to help relieve dogs of their excess energy. Dogs also get access to 3,000 square feet of indoor space, so they can burn calories regardless of the season, and employees are specialized in keeping dogs safe.
The rustic interior may make guests think otherwise, but the bar opened for business just this year, in March, and the folks running the show have already made a few additions.
“With this excessive heat this summer we’ve added some pools, some splash pads to our outdoor space to keep things cooler with this excessive heat and also warm and dry for the upcoming winter months as well,” explained co-owner Lisa Hollander.
Blanketed in wood chips and complete with jumps and ramps like one would find at the Westminster Kennel Club, the outdoor grounds are better manicured than the average dog park, but pups are not there to be graded on their ability to follow commands. They’re there for fun.
Owners are able to relax, too, thanks to the “Bark Rangers” on staff, who are trained to recognize different behaviors and health conditions in dogs. If pups need to be separated, the rangers can place them in a holding pen that still allows for running around. With the rangers on patrol for any foul dog play, canine stewards can rest easy and order dog-themed cocktails like the Salty Chihuahua, a grapefruit margarita.
“You’re able to let your dog off leash and give [them] a great time while enjoying yourself as well,” Hollander added. “At local dog parks, the owners are sitting along on the sidelines watching their dogs have fun. At a typical bar or restaurant, your dog is at a table on a leash and kind of just waiting for you to finish your meal. So this way the dogs can run around off leash in a fun, safe environment while their owners have fun as well.”
The business’s full-service bar keeps local taps, wines and liquors on hand, but no food is prepared on-site due to the nature of the business; instead, Hollander and her co-owner husband, Eric, invite a rotating lineup of food trucks to the bar’s parking lot each weekend. Anyone who stops in for a Browns game on Sunday will find the Burning River BBQ truck and $2 pre-game drink specials for the bar’s watch parties, which are shown on a 150-inch projector. For the record, Hollander said she considered working “Dawg Pound” into her marketing, but she cannot because it’s copyrighted.
The couple also encourages visitors to bring takeout meals to the bar and enjoy them while their pups play. Single-day passes for the outdoor play area cost $8, but dog owners can also purchase monthly or annual passes for $29 or $219, respectively.
Like affoGATO, Taps & Tails keeps its food and drink section separated from its play areas, but since it’s housed in a barn-type building patrons make their exit through garage doors and sloping ramps. If it all sounds very “Alice in Wonderland,” that’s because it is. Both feel unfamiliar because there aren’t many other businesses in Cleveland that leverage pet-human interactions so effectively. Also, they’re not exactly built for humans.
Cornering the mar-cat
“A lot of cafes and businesses in general have to deal with the ‘customer is always right’ [mentality]. Which is an ideal, it’s a good thing to strive for. But for us, the well-being of the cats comes above that,” Miller explained.
Cats at affoGATO take the “lounge” part of “cat lounge” very seriously. Walk past the front counter and into the back room on any given day and they’ll be poised in felted cylinders or crawling about the room’s bookshelf, which is built to let cats climb up to the ceiling. The room is all hardwood, blocky fixtures and modern furniture, giving guests the experience of being in a comfortable living room with over a dozen feline friends. It’s essentially a cat version of the dog bar’s outdoor play zone.
Madia, one of the cats currently up for adoption at affoGATO, prefers to spend her mornings lounging in a cylindrical cubby in the lounge.(Collin Cunningham/NewsBreak)
The walls at affoGATO shine with a thick lacquer that subdues the deep blues into navy shades and bright reds into barnyard hues.
As the co-owner of a business that sets out to please two different species, Miller said she often has to make decisions or think about issues that most entrepreneurs never have to ponder, including what interior environments might overwhelm residing cats.
“Even on days that we’re not open, the staff comes in multiple times a day to help feed the cats and play with them. They can sit with us, [we] open the windows to make sure they can get some sunshine and people watch outside. We make sure they don’t get stressed or lonely when people aren’t here.”
Humans who visit affoGATO might be overwhelmed, if only by the cafe’s 13-page menu. The cat cafe’s food selection is also sourced externally, but since affoGATO specializes in coffee, it relies upon one single bakery for its selection of treats: The all-vegan Totally Sweet near Cleveland’s Waterloo Arts District.
Much akin to the dog bar, the feline-themed coffee shop’s drinks reference the creatures that find comfort there. The business’s namesake is a drink that cat aficionados can order, a double espresso topped with two scoops of ice cream from the nearby Mitchell’s. And the “cafe au lay-on-your-keyboard” should appeal to any cat owners who have ever had to work from home, with its play on cafe au lait.
Specialized interiors present an issue that Hollander also has to think about at Taps & Tails, but instead of worrying about dogs getting overwhelmed, the co-owner said she has to make her business suitable to canines of all sizes, using tricks like the partitioned outdoor pen and breed-specific meetups.
The size of the place also allows the Hollanders and their employees to offer doggy daycare services and the couple intends to introduce overnight boarding in the future.
Animal control
Unique businesses also need to impose unique rules or restrictions on customers, sometimes, and for Taps & Tails and affoGATO that takes the form of additional scheduling and safety measures, including requiring collar name tags and up-to-date vaccinations for the pets. If dogs want to hang out on the outdoor patio, they must be on a leash but can run free in both indoor and outdoor parks. Dogs with histories of aggression are not welcome at the park for the safety of other pups.
“We require just the standard [vaccines] that typical dog daycares would,” Hollander continued. “We’ve gotten backlash like ‘What do you mean? My dog isn’t boarding or going to daycare, we just want to hang out in the dog park.’”
Over at affoGATO, Miller said she and her fellow employees have to put a foot down when guests try to walk in on a busy day without scheduling in advance. While reservations aren’t required, they are recommended because the cafe’s 30-minute time slots fill up and space is limited.
“We can’t stress [the cats] out by putting more people in the room, like we’d love to help you but we can’t. The cats come first. So I’d say that’s our biggest challenge,” Miller elaborated.
A sarcastic affoGATO Instagram post from mid-October summed up the issues the operators of the feline bistro have been having with walk-ins: “First up, let's be clear: if you've popped in to check if we had walk-ins and weren't making a scene in our cafe by whining, arguing, or storming off while cursing at our staff, this post isn't about you.”
Every dog has its beer, every cat has its coffee
Cleveland’s dog bar and cat cafe both play by their own rules and have found success in doing so. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can give it a new place to run around, and that’s what At Taps & Tails, Hollander is preparing for winter by placing more toys and obstacles in the bar’s 3,000-foot indoor area.
Hollander also said she intends to introduce new indoor events like trivia nights during the cold months, and wants to continue fostering the kinds of human-human and human-dog relationships the bar has come to engender. Something about the combination of dogs and alcohol seems to give the bar a matchmaking quality; when Hollabderspoke to NewsBreak, she said she had seen a new friendship bloom the previous evening.
“Just last night two people had the same dog name and they became really good friends,” she recounted. “This couple stayed a lot later, ordered more drinks just because they’d never met another dog with the same dog name as them. So I think it’s creating those friendships over the love of dogs and I think that’s so fun.”
As an all-indoor operation, affoGATO is already situated to continue its mission of getting cats out of the foster system and keeping people caffeinated through spring. Since the lounge area is actually larger than the cafe seating area, which Miller said is the opposite approach from what is found at most cat cafes, the calicos and tortoiseshells will have plenty of room to stretch their legs rent-free. Ideally, they’ll stretch them right into a new home.
“I would say the goal is to be both comforting and rewarding,” Miller said. “We want people to come in and they feel like it’s their living room and they can visit all these cats in this comfortable space and maybe unwind after a really hard week, because things get so stressful lately. And then also to feel rewarded, you’re coming here to do a good thing.”
affoGATO is currently welcoming non-cat customers to register from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and on Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Taps & Tails is open to dogs and humans between Monday and Thursday between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., Friday between 4 and 10 p.m., Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m.
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