Cats and coffee are an inspired pairing. Luckily for Triangle residents, both can be found in a handful of innovative cat cafés, from Chapel Hill to Fuquay-Varina. These four spots work with rescues and shelters to help their feline residents find permanent homes while providing visitors with an experience they’re not soon to forget. When planning your trip to a cat café, make sure to check its website to reserve time in its cat room. Cat cafés rarely allow walk-ins.
Purr Cup might be the smallest of the Triangle’s cat cafés, but it’s more than mighty enough to make up for it, especially since the café directly partners with the Wake County SPCA. Purr Cup boasts an all-vegan menu and seasonal drinks inspired by pop culture references (e.g., this summer’s matcha “Brat Lemonade” drink).
If you can’t get to Purr Cup for a soy milk latte or a seasonal drink, try looking toward community events such as Eliza Pool Park’s Really Really Free Market, which features Purr Cup Café coffee. Purr Cup prides itself on its size, offering an intimate environment where you’re unlikely to miss out on meeting every cat. You can visit Purr Cup for up to 55 minutes at a time via reservation, which costs $10 per person.
As the youngest of the Triangle’s cat cafés, only opening last year, you might not expect Right Meow to already have a cast of dedicated regulars. Tucked into a quiet corner of Fuquay-Varina, this cozy café invites visitors to linger.
Right Meow embraces its homey atmosphere, with owners Karen and Damien Posey’s entire family contributing to the café, from working shifts to creating the café’s logo. Right Meow’s drinks stick out in more than one way, since as well as offering boba and frappés, their entire menu is named after cats who were former café residents, from the Frog, a mango-pineapple green tea with dragon fruit popping boba, to the Buster, a brown sugar milk tea with a shot of espresso.
Right Meow’s lobby is decorated with pictures of the café’s over 126 former residents, and in the cat lounge you can meet up to 16 adoptable cats, all excited to see if you might be their next home. You can visit Right Meow for up to 45 minutes at a time via reservation, which costs $10 per person.
The creation of Cat Tales is a tale of its own: in 2015, owners Katy Poitras and Ilene Speizer met by chance when they were individually looking to create cat cafés and ended up collaborating in this shared venture.
Cat Tales has a beautiful two-story building, with a wall of windows for cats and humans alike to look out onto Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street. Recently, it became the first and only North Carolina cat café to create its own nonprofit rescue, meaning Poitras and Speizer can follow their residents from rescue to adoption.
Alongside the up to 12 cats you can find on the cat floor, Cat Tales’ associated cat rescue has many other cats in foster, listed on the café’s website, waiting [or their turn at the café. You can visit Cat Tales for up to one hour at a time via reservation, which costs $12 per person during the week and $14 on weekends.
Whether it be through its Frabjous Book Club or weekly meditation and yoga sessions, Frabjous Catfé creates a sense of community for Wake Forest and its around five feline residents. Frabjous has a clear Alice in Wonderland inspiration, from the name of its lounge—the Cheshire Lounge—to a menu featuring mainstays like the Mad Mocha, a double espresso drink with steamed milk and chocolate sauce, and seasonal drinks like the Eat Me Latte, featuring white chocolate, cupcake, and vanilla flavors.
Unlike the other cafés, Frabjous offers Monday “adult only” nights for those without kids. You can visit Frabjous for 30 to 60 minutes at a time via reservation, which costs $7 to $10 per person during the week or $9 to $12 on weekends.
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