Make NEKO NGERU Cat Cafe "Pawsome"!

Make NEKO NGERU Cat Cafe "Pawsome"!

Project 2022-03-24 15:06:32 +1300

What Are We Doing?

We want more homeless cats to be adopted into loving homes. For this reason, we opened NEKO NGERU Cat Adoption Café back in 2017 as a place where people and cats could meet over drinks and food to get to know each other and find out if they are compatible. From 2018 to 2021 we were able to help 152 cats find their new families. 

(* the number after cat's name is their graduate (adopted) number)

Peaches (#143) as a kitten	Great athlete, Tiger Lily (#150)!	Food thief, Beta (#99)

We know that lots of people in Wellington cannot have cats in their homes for various reasons. Our café in Petone provided a place for people to relax and enjoy cats without commitment. People who loved cats and had them at home still wanted to hang out with our cats because . . . cats are cool. We not only had regular café hours but were open for evening events like cat yoga, cat quiz, cat bingo, cat themed games, cat toy making, movie screenings, and informative talks from experts in cat behaviour and cat training.

Yoga insturctor and Spot (#46)	Conner (#149) and Peaches help massage

We had a successful cat café in Petone so why did we close it? To look for a building where we could live and have our cat café in the same place. We wanted to be able to care for the cats better and be available for them 24/7. It’s taken a while, but we have bought a two-story building in Lower Hutt. The ground floor is already leased out to Café Soleil and the first floor is going to be our cat café. That’s where you can help. We would like to make the cat area so awesome with a massive catio (a cat patio--covered and screened deck), amazing climbing platforms and scratching posts all along the walls, windows and maybe even the ceiling! We want to have nice human furniture too that the cats and humans can enjoy together.  In our new space we will bring back all the great things we did before plus we will apply for a liquor license so we can have wine and beer with cats plus sake tasting events. For this project, we expect to spend over $150,000 that’s why we would like to raise at least $50,000 to help us along. Costs keep going up, so it would be great to raise even more.

The signage is ready!	The Cat Cafe will be on the 1st floor (ground floor is Cafe Soleil)

What We Have Been Doing

Some may be wondering, “you closed back in June 2021, why is it taking so long to open the new café?” We can tell you it has been a long and difficult process and is likely to continue that way. We had our hearts set on Wellington CBD for its population density, but we weren't finding anything that was right for us. Then Hutt Radio encouraged us to try for 215 High St in Lower Hutt and we agreed it had good location and potential. First, we had to be really persistent in buying the building. We just kept making offers at each chance and were finally accepted after four months. Then we put our home up for sale to pay for it but the housing market flooded with houses for sale and there were not enough people who could get bank loans even if they wanted to buy them. So, we still haven't sold our house! Thus we have had to get a loan to bridge the gap and settle the final payment on the building. Ken also had difficulty to send his money from his account in Japan to his account in NZ. New regulations made overseas transfers so difficult. After he extended his stay in Japan, he finally managed it but the Japanes Yen dropped about 10% against NZ Dollar! Then there were delays in getting consent for the ground floor construction. We just wanted to do the simple things we were told had to be done to make it safer and able to have more customers, but it took four months. We waited five months for a seismic report that we need to be able to submit the request for the change of use for the first floor which will be a cat cafe.  Until recently, all the builders were too busy to consider our project but it seems that social media has come to the rescue and we may be able to go ahead with the ground floor construction soon. We will start planning ahead and getting the materials we need for the first floor, many of which are in short supply, preparing for the day when we do get the consent to begin construction upstairs. 

Meanwhile, we do have tenants on the ground floor, Café Soleil, who make delicious food with friendly service and Hutt Radio. Support for them is another way to support us.

Of course, a police officer needs cat time!	Meal Time	Willow (#4) enjoys a cuddle with a girl

Who Are We?

If you have gotten to know us in Petone or through social media, you may already know we are Ken and Richelle Okada originally from Osaka, Japan and San Diego, California. As international school teachers in Japan, Kuwait, Mexico and China we got to travel a lot but, we chose New Zealand as the place we would settle down because we think it is the best.

Our dream to open a cat café comes from experiences working with rescue groups in Shanghai, China and rescuing abandoned cats around the world. We saw a need for a place where people could comfortably and conveniently see those cats that need homes. That dream has come true so we decided to make it a full life commitment. Buying a commercial building for our cat café is a big step of faith. But, we have decided to dedicate ourselves to this cause: helping cats and the people who love them. Our name signifies both where we come from and where we are. Neko is Japanese for cat and Ngeru is cat in te reo Māori. Japan is where cat cafes first became popular and New Zealand is where we are.

Ken, Lady Bug (#96) and Peaches	Richelle and Conner

What Is a Cat Cafe?

Some of you may not have heard of us before seeing this campaign so we will fill you in. A cat cafe is a cafe...with cats. At Neko Ngeru, we will have 15 to 20 cats living in their own space on the cafe premises. There, you will be able to get all the healing and stress reducing benefits that you need from contact with our cats.

They will be separated from the food service area by a staircase, walls and double doors. Customers can enter the cat's play room for an hourly fee. If you purchase food and/or drink from Cafe Soleil on the ground floor, you can ask them to bring it up to the cat's area (just don't let the cats have any since most human food is not good for them and they will be well-fed anyway).  As well as being open in normal business hours, we will also organize some events after hours and allow bookings for events, parties and functions. We plan to have cat assisted yoga, game and quiz nights, and many other things.

Earl (#135) and Louie (#136)	Silver (#132) and Carrie (#133)	Tyrion (#93) enjoys massage from humans

Where Do the Cats Come From?

We have been working with many of the smaller rescue groups around Wellington to be the sources of our cats and that will continue.  They usually select the most sociable cats for us to adopt and keep at our café but we sometimes take shy ones. The cats will be de-sexed, microchipped, de wormed and fully vaccinated. Many of the cats will have been abandoned or surrendered to the rescue organizations, but some of them will have been born wild in a colony then socialized so they can live in a home. Every adoption reduces the number of stray cats who must hunt to live. Supporting the rescue organizations in de-sexing as many cats as they can means there will be fewer kittens and cats dying painfully every year. 

Tiger Lily and Conner both came from Kitty Cat Resuce Wairarapa	Tiny (#69) was rescued in Naenae and gave birth soon after. All kittens got adopted from the cafe too!	Pepper ( #112) was surrended to us when her human went overseas

Is Every Cat Available for Adoption?

Our cats’ comfort and stability are important to us, so some of our cats will be long term resident ‘professor cats’ for stability. Finding good homes for as many cats as we can is also a priority with us, so we will have a good ratio of adoptable ‘student cats’ in our café. They will stay with us for at least a month so they can be socialised in the café and meet our customers. We will accept applications and choose the best match for the cat as the adopter. We will continue to help as many cats find forever homes as we can and take some of the pressure off the rescue organizations so they can work on socializing the more timid cats. In short, we want to help cats and the people who love them.

Pippin is looking forward to being the 1st resident in the new Cat Cafe!	Valentin (#142) was a former long term resident	Toulouse (#104) and his human family

How You Can Help

Of course, pledges will be helpful. Even five dollars can contribute to reaching the goal of $50,000. We hope the rewards will encourage you to give as much as you can.  But, sharing is great too. The more people who know about our crowdfunding, the more can participate in helping us make NEKO NGEU Cat Café absolutely “PAWSOME”!  Thank you so much for your continued support.

Drawing of the new Cat Cafe!	Catio (Cat + Patio) in Purrs & Beans NZ in Auckland made by Moa's Ark	Inky (#95) on the Cat Bridge

Video credit: Bradley Saunders-Garner

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