As the world marked World Men­tal Health Day on Sat­ur­day, writer Car­ol Quash took us on an un­ex­pect­ed jour­ney to a cat café, where the com­fort and com­pan­ion­ship of cats are help­ing to cre­ate a safe and wel­com­ing space for peo­ple deal­ing with men­tal health chal­lenges. It is a place where fur­ry friends, con­ver­sa­tion and com­pas­sion come to­geth­er to make a dif­fer­ence.

An­i­mal com­pan­ion­ship has been found to be ben­e­fi­cial for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, as for many peo­ple, in­ter­act­ing with an­i­mals can pro­vide a sense of com­fort, calm and re­lax­ation – one of the many ob­jec­tives of the St Au­gus­tine-based Lily’s Cat Café.

“Cats are very pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al be­ings with peace­ful en­er­gies, and they def­i­nite­ly help with men­tal health,” cat lover and co-founder of the café, Michelle Pounder told WE Life and Cul­ture.

“Just by sim­ply sit­ting and pet­ting a cat, brings me more in­to the present mo­ment and helps re­duce stress.”

Al­though they each have unique per­son­al­i­ties and set bound­aries, she be­lieves they all have one thing in com­mon: “They just want a hu­man to be able to give love to.”

The cafe was the cre­ation of a space where cat lovers and fe­lines can spend time to­geth­er, but al­so to try to dis­pel a lot of the neg­a­tive per­cep­tions peo­ple have about cats.

“So we just want­ed to cre­ate a com­fy en­vi­ron­ment where they could spend time with cats in ways that maybe they haven’t been able to be­fore. I grew up with pets my whole life, but I was scared of cats, for no rea­son. Sim­i­lar­ly, there are many peo­ple who fear cats, but they nev­er have a rea­son.”

She said it wasn’t un­til she got cats of her own and moved in­to her own space with them that she saw a very dif­fer­ent side to them.

“You just think that they’re scary and they’re go­ing to scratch you, but they’re su­per lov­ing, just in a dif­fer­ent way and on their own terms.”

The café is open to in­di­vid­u­als and groups, and she said they’ve had peo­ple com­ing in for var­i­ous rea­sons.

“Some peo­ple just come to lit­er­al­ly sit down and chill with the cats, just to play with them. Some peo­ple will come for a qui­et space to work while hav­ing the com­fort­able pres­ence of a cat. Some peo­ple come with friends to play games, or they may have lost a pet of their own and they just want­ed a space where they could ful­ly in­ter­act with their new pets.”

The café al­so hosts events, such as Paws and Re­flect, Cat­nip and Paint, as well as movie nights with the cats.

“So dif­fer­ent events cater to dif­fer­ent types of ac­tiv­i­ties that peo­ple want to do. My favourite is Paws and Re­flect, which is a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion in the pres­ence of these very peace­ful an­i­mals; a very pow­er­ful tool for stress and anx­i­ety re­duc­tion.”

Cat­nip and Paint, she ex­plained, some­times in­volves putting paint on a can­vas and sprin­kling cat­nip over it.

“The cats kind of help cre­ate the mas­ter­pieces. They roll around on top of it and cre­ate the back­ground of your art­work.”

Pounder said a cat café was first opened at the lo­ca­tion by Ten­der­heart An­i­mals Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic. She and co-founder Ak­il Samuel of­fi­cial­ly took over the space in 2024 and re­named it af­ter her own cat, Lily.

“They (Ten­der­heart) cre­at­ed the space, built every­thing in the cats’ room, all the ramps and every­thing. They re­al­ly built a very com­fort­able space for the cats and were look­ing for some­body to take over the space. And at that point in time, I was think­ing about open­ing a cat cafe.”

Pounder vis­it­ed Co­lum­bia, where she saw how a cat cafe func­tions.

“So every­thing just fell in­to place. We did a six month tri­al where we just host­ed events and then took over ful­ly last year, June.

The café cur­rent­ly serves as home to 11 cats, and a lot more wait­ing to come in, main­ly from the Trinidad & To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals - TTSP­CA.

“We try to keep it at ten, but some­times we can’t,” she ex­plained, as cats of vary­ing colours and sizes jumped in­to her lap, cu­ri­ous­ly peeked in­to her hand­bag, found them­selves in­side com­fort­able bas­kets, sprawled out on top of ta­bles and book­shelves, and paced with their tails up in the air.

“As soon as we get them adopt­ed, we take in new cats to re­place them. We have a room where we would keep the new cats for a while un­til they ac­cli­ma­tise to the space and the oth­er cats get used to them. And then we in­tro­duce them to the whole clan.”

Af­ter a cat is adopt­ed, she said, they don’t im­me­di­ate­ly take in any new ones, just in case there are re­turns.

“Some­times they don’t ac­cli­ma­tise well or they clash with oth­er pets. So we do give a lit­tle grace pe­ri­od, be­cause, of course we’ll take them back.”

And while she would love to take them all home, she al­ready has her hands and laps full.

“I have three cats of my own at home, and my boyfriend threat­ened that it’s ei­ther the next cat or him,” she laughed hearti­ly.

Pounder’s ed­u­ca­tion on an­i­mal wel­fare and pets came through her full-time mar­ket­ing job, through which she has had to work close­ly with a lot of shel­ters, in­clud­ing the TTSP­CA, through which the cafe gets its new cats.

Fund­ing for the café comes from paid vis­its, events, and out of her own pock­et.

Hope­ful­ly, she said, it will even­tu­al­ly be­come a self-sus­tain­ing, func­tion­ing busi­ness.

But for now, she en­cour­ages peo­ple, in­clud­ing non-cat lovers, to vis­it and ex­pe­ri­ence the café, even if out of cu­rios­i­ty.

“It’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to, in a very com­fort­able, qui­et at­mos­phere, be able to in­ter­act with them and un­der­stand their dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties. You may be sur­prised how your per­cep­tion may change.”