A Facebook post from a local woman promoting her new business venture, Tabby Time Cat Café & Child Care, made it to Reddit recently and, within days, the operation closed down.

Originally upset by the lack of coffee at the café, soon laughs turned into concern for the kittens in care. People were quick to ask whether the organisation she was fostering through knew about the business venture. It didn’t take long for Paws For More to get word of what was happening and quickly respond to the concerns.

Before all this, the foster carer had done good work, according to Paws For More founder, Danny Shean, including collecting kittens from the pound and they were happy to keep working with her.

“It was definitely a surprise that she would just go ahead without officially being approved to do it or doing any due diligence on how to make it safe for the kittens,” Mr Shean says.

The foster carer approached Paws For More with a proposal for the cat café to which the organisation shared their concerns for the safety of the kittens and said they would look into it.

“We expressed concerns about the idea, it could be exploitive with the kittens and not safe for the kittens… We gave our thoughts on the idea, we never gave her any permission or approval to go ahead. As in any business, if a proposal comes up, we want to look at it and go through all aspects and do research.

“In the following days, we found out that she had been beginning to operate it. That was when Reddit blew up and people brought it to our attention that she was already operating the café without any of the requirements she would need.”

The timing of opening a cat café with small, vulnerable kittens couldn’t have been worse as Australia is currently facing a nationwide feline vaccine shortage. Mr Shean says it is not a realistic time to open a cat café that could put kittens at risk.

“It’s really dangerous for kittens at the moment to just be in contact with anyone, we’re not having adopters come to view cats, we’re doing a trial system,” he says.

Even without the vaccine shortage, this operation would have been putting the kittens at unnecessary risk, says Mr Shean. He explains other cat cafés are run in public spaces with ample space between cats and beverage and food service, with animals hand-picked for their personality and ability to handle the stimulation.

He says running it from a loungeroom negates a lot of those safety measures.

“The idea of cat cafés isn’t the full issue; it is the fact that this was a poorly planned one and one done without consent. Overexposing the kittens to too much stimulus can have a negative impact on them,” he says. “It’s not hard for someone to accidentally injure a kitten and the space when we went to get the cats was a very small one and she was offering 12 people.”

The foster organisation quickly jumped into action and set about retrieving the kittens housed with the foster carer. However, they were only able to collect four as she refused to hand over two kittens.

Since then, the two kittens have been placed with their adoptive owner early and the other four have remained in the direct care of Paws For More. Mr Shean says they want to keep a close eye on them and ensure they have not caught any virus from ‘café’ customers they might have encountered.

Paws For More is self-funded, relies on donations to operate, and wouldn’t consider financially gaining from the animals in their care.

“Another reason we were not keen on the proposal was she said she wanted to try to get money to pay off her mortgage. We did say we’re here to help animals not people pay their mortgage; she said maybe in two or three years when she breaks even, we would start to see some of it.

“The idea that someone thought it was okay to use foster kittens in their care to try and generate income for themselves, it’s just not what we expect from a foster or what any rescue would expect from their foster.”

Not wanting to gain from something negative, Paws For More hasn’t been accepting donations that have stemmed from the incident.

“We decided in the interest of our integrity that it’s best that we don’t try to further the concerns around the financial motivations around these kittens. As a rescue, we didn’t want to use such a negative event to generate any type of funding, it didn’t feel right,” says Mr Shean.

New to Reddit, Mr Shean made an account to reply to the commenters. He says the organisation wanted to show full transparency while resolving the incident. He says although they have received criticism that their updates made people think negatively of the foster carer, that wasn’t their intention.

“Our intention solely was to make sure people who had expressed a lot of concern for the kittens were kept up to date and hopefully quell a lot of questions people had.”

Although the foster carer had been in contact with the organisation for a while, she had only been fostering cats for around two months due to a medical incident.

“I wasn’t aware of the full details of why she was unwell until it was brought up that she had trapped a cat and sustained an injury from the cat.”

This was just one of the red flags they discovered while reading the comments on the Reddit and Facebook posts.

A huge red flag for many commenters was the proposed use of NDIS funds to cover a visit to the cat café.

“We don’t know how the NDIS works; we would never authorise anything mentioned of that without being researched. It is just poor due diligence by the foster as well in the endeavour but obviously, if our name is attached to it and it turns out it is not allowed by NDIS or she didn’t have a tax number, it comes back on us as well.”

Thankful to the Redditors for drawing their attention to what was happening, Mr Shean says some of the comments towards the fosterer were vile and disgusting.

“I understand people had anger about how the situation was going and they needed some way to express it; with the internet the way it is, you’re going to find it is a good soundboard to get their frustrations out,” he says.

When sending an animal to a foster carer, the organisation expects that it will be treated like a member of the family. With cats, Mr Shean says that means socialising with the people in the house, giving them attention, a safe environment and ensuring they are well fed.

“Majority of the time, they’re amazing, we have had some of the most amazing foster carers that you could expect, people who go well and above and beyond for their cats in their care,” he says.

Positive outcomes can come from cat cafés, according to Mr Shean, including removing some of the stigma that surrounds felines. However, he says, the kittens and cats should be older and at a stage where they can be introduced to many people.

“I would hope in the future if a cat café was to be opened by a legitimate business in Canberra, that people don’t let this experience turn them off the idea… The idea itself isn’t a bad idea, it just needs to be done right …”

As the posts stated multiple times that DAS and RSPCA had visited the property and only requested an additional water bowl for the kittens, Canberra Daily contacted the animal welfare experts for comment.

RPSCA

We are aware that a cat café is being promoted in Canberra. 

Safeguarding the welfare of our animals within the ACT is our priority. 

Domestic Animal Services and RSPCA ACT are working together to confirm the café’s compliance with animal welfare codes of practice and licensing requirements under the Animal Welfare Act 1992 and Domestic Animals Act 2000. 

RSPCA ACT wishes to acknowledge and thank members of the community who raise animal welfare matters of concern via the Inspectorate and encourages people to continue to do so.

Department of Animal Services

Domestic Animal Services and RSCPA ACT have conducted an inspection of a premises after receiving a complaint. No animal welfare offences were detected.

Canberra Daily is keen to hear from you about a story idea in the Canberra and surrounding region. Click here to submit a news tip.