Books, Cats, Coffee

By Kelly Lemieux

What’s the secret to a successful shop in Denver? Open a cafe, serve premium coffee and pastries, and — after filling the place with books — have adoptable cats of various shapes and sizes wander about to keep patrons happy as they read and sip.

Situated in the hip and cozy Berkeley neighborhood south of the 44-bus line, the Denver Cat Company has turned an emerging trend into a reality in the northwest corner of our city. (See Oakland and New York for the trendsetting; see Denver for making it free.)

“[We’ve] been busy!” says Sana Hamelin, the onsite owner of Denver Cat Company. “It’s been chaos. [At first], the cats were freaked out about the amount of attention from customers.” The dust, however, has settled and the cats and customers are getting along famously.

“I love cats,” Sana admits, concerning why she started a cat cafe. “[And] I love books.” She gave up her life as an attorney to pursue her business dream and it appears not only to be successful, but cool and fun — a rare combination.

The drinks and the pastries are standard for a metro-Denver coffee shop, but the java for the Denver Cat Company specifically comes from Solar Roast in Pueblo, which uses solar power to roast its beans. The dark roast I tried was delicious with raw cane sugar and 1% milk. The banana-walnut bread — from Martine’s in the Golden Triangle neighborhood — was moist and flavorful.

The main attraction at the Denver Cat Company on Tennyson is, naturally, the feline companionship. There are between six and eight cats in the cafe and they’re all residents until they’re adopted.

On weekends, there’s a $5 entry fee per customer per visit that gets you access to the cats and the cafe, but the weekdays are free — quite the bargain, you’ll find, compared to feline bistros in other cities.