Gin­ger was the first. Striped or­ange and found in a drain af­ter a storm, it was a toss-up be­tween nam­ing him Gin­ger and Garfield. I was veer­ing to­wards Garfield be­cause of his “nine-months preg­nant” stom­ach but af­ter two lit­tle girls fell in love with both him and the name Gin­ger, his moniker was set in stone.

Next came Em­ma, res­cued from the WASA com­pound in St Joseph. Hav­ing al­ways been a lon­er, she be­came the clin­ic cat, choos­ing to pa­trol the bor­ders and play body­guard to the vets on du­ty in­stead of hang­ing out in the cat café with the oth­er res­i­dents. El­sa and An­na, sis­ters named af­ter the sib­lings in Frozen pure­ly be­cause El­sa has an ice-cold yet cu­ri­ous per­son­al­i­ty and An­na is the more out­go­ing of the two. Then a lit­ter of four: Jer­ry, Tig­gy, Mit­tens and Mol­ly. Jer­ry is one-half of the two grey cats at the café, the oth­er was Tom who is no more. Tig­gy’s name was the most pre­dictable—every­one who sees her com­ments on how much she looks like a minia­ture tiger but her charm is far greater than her roar.

Mit­tens has four lit­tle white paws that con­trast beau­ti­ful­ly with her or­ange and black legs and body and make her look like she is wear­ing her name. Mol­ly is the di­va—her name came from the book An­i­mal Farm by George Or­well. Mol­ly the Ten­der­heart cat nowhere re­sem­bles Mol­lie the mare in the book in terms of fool­ish­ness, but she loves at­ten­tion and has a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with Gin­ger. Fi­nal­ly, a lit­ter of three black and white kit­tens: Tip­py, Taj and Tino. Tip­py’s name was al­so due to her good looks—black all over with a white-tipped tail and white-tipped paws and quite the “lap cat” lov­ing noth­ing more than to cud­dle up for a nap in your lap. Taj was named sen­ti­men­tal­ly in mem­o­ry of an­oth­er black cat with the shape of the ivory dome of the Taj Ma­hal re­flect­ed in white on her oth­er­wise black face. Tino was named by a Ten­der­heart vet—a name plucked out of the air as the vet was put on the spot to come up with an­oth­er name be­gin­ning with “T”!

That was sup­posed to be it, but three more have come along which are up for adop­tion. Mr Grey—stormy grey in colour and named by a Ten­der­heart vet af­ter the in­fa­mous Chris­t­ian Grey of Fifty Shades. But­tons is the youngest, not yet six months old and cute as a but­ton. Last but not least, and keep­ing with the movie theme: Crook­shanks—whose name will be fa­mil­iar to any Har­ry Pot­ter fan. This sweet­ie is al­so less than six months old and was res­cued from roam­ing the streets af­ter res­i­dents threat­ened to poi­son her.

These cats com­prise the Ten­der­heart Cats fam­i­ly—a dar­ing and in­no­v­a­tive ven­ture by Drs Wade Seuk­er­an and Car­olyn Mike of Ten­der­heart An­i­mals in St Au­gus­tine. Guests can chill out and play with the friend­ly cats in the lounge, study their be­hav­iour and en­joy their an­tics, browse through the book cor­ner, re­lax in the café with a hot or cold drink, munch on snacks while us­ing the Wi-Fi and much more. The venue is al­so used for lec­tures, meet­ings, so­cials and class­es. Schools are es­pe­cial­ly wel­come as ed­u­ca­tion is one of the ways we can teach our chil­dren that while they do not have to like an an­i­mal, they can al­ways choose to be kind in­stead of cru­el.

The cat café is open for vis­i­tors by ap­point­ment on­ly. You can make a book­ing, vol­un­teer your time, ideas and ser­vice. You can check out their Face­book and In­sta­gram pages—Ten­der­heart An­i­mals.

Copy­right © Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath 2019