SHIAWASSEE COUNTY, Mich.— The idea started with the daily walk for a quiet, Sunday morning cup of coffee when Defying Gravity Café owner Michelle Holmes was on vacation. However, what would have been a hot cup of joe instead was a “booked for the day” sign and the realization that it was a cat café- and the rest was history.
“I reached out to our friends at the humane society close to a year ago to see if they would be interested in partnering with us and they were all over it,” said Michelle Holmes, the owner of Defying Gravity Bakery Café and Catvalier Lounge. “It’s been a great partnership from there forward.”
Now, years later, the Catvalier Lounge was born. While most cat cafes are connected directly to the coffee shop with a separate cat room, the Catvalier Lounge is a different building with the Defying Gravity bakery next door. With that, they can continue to serve out of their full bakery and give the cats a larger area to roam…