Adoptable kitty lounge Mini Cat Town brings snuggles and purrs to Santa Rosa Plaza

Santa Rosa Plaza is about to get some cuddly new tenants with this weekend’s opening of a cat adoption lounge.

Mini Cat Town, a San Jose-based nonprofit that helps feline friends find their forever home, will open its first Sonoma County location on Saturday.

“We’re really excited to bring another unique experience to our shoppers,” Santa Rosa Plaza spokesperson Danielle Nelson said Thursday. “We love that Mini Cat Town is a small business, that it’s a nonprofit and that it’s local, things that are super important to our community.”

The nonprofit was started in 2015 by three sisters: Thi, Thoa and Tram Bui.

The organization rescues neonatal — or orphaned — kittens with the ultimate goal of placing them up for adoption. They are cared for, then spayed and neutered as part of the process.

The cats ready for adoption go to the Mini Cat Town lounge where potential adopters, or anyone looking to cuddle with a fluffy feline, can interact with them.

“We’re really excited to be in Santa Rosa,” Thoa Bui said. “Having the space in a community like Santa Rosa brings a whole new set of eyes that can see what this work is about and hopefully start participating to learn more about it.”

Mini Cat Town will open on the mall’s first floor, near its west main entrance, next to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Letty’s Ice Cream.

Santa Rosa Plaza will be the nonprofit’s third location, with other lounges at the Eastridge Shopping Center in San Jose and Stoneridge Shopping Center in Pleasanton.

The lounge will be open from noon to 7 p.m. seven days a week and admission will cost $15 for 30 minutes for adults and $10 for kids on a walk-in basis.

People admitted into the lounge can spend time playing or cuddling with the kittens until their time is up. Anyone interested in adopting a cat can fill out an application on the nonprofit’s website.

The cats for adoption are rescued from Merced, Thoa Bui said.

Money earned from admission and adoption fees go toward providing care and supplies to rescue more kittens.

Mini Cat Town will celebrate its Saturday grand opening with a special of $5 for 15 minutes.

“We want everyone who wants to see the space be able to see it that day,” Thoa Bui said.

Bui and her sisters grew up in a neighborhood in south San Jose, which was overrun by stray and feral cats. When they were younger, the sisters would save up their $1 a week allowances to buy food and care for the cats until they were old enough to be adopted.

“We just had cat colonies and they kept breeding so we would just keep finding kittens,” Thoa Bui said. “As kids, we thought the kittens were really cute but as we got older we thought this could be an issue and no one’s doing anything about it.”

Bui and her sisters learned about Trap, Neuter, Release, a program that teaches how to humanely trap cats, have them spayed or neutered at a local shelter, and then released.

The Bui sisters each worked at their local Baskin-Robbins throughout high school to save up money to help the neighborhood cats through the Trap, Neuter, Release program.

They rescued over 100 cats and started independently fostering cats on a small scale as college students.

The sisters operated their kitten fostering out of their mother’s home, which became inundated with cats and their supplies. The sisters knew then they needed to expand.

“We wanted to find an office space where we could meet potential adopters and keep our kitten supplies there but no office or property would take us,” Bui said. My sister suggested we try the mall and surprisingly enough, they were gung-ho for it.“

Mini Cat Town opened its first brick-and-mortar location and registered as a nonprofit in June 2019. Since opening, the nonprofit has rescued 1,500 cats.

Bui said she and her sisters love watching the cats come out of their shells when they spend time playing with guests or with one another.

Having the cats on the floor help them become socialized with people and gain confidence so they can be the most adoptable kitten possible.

“If you told me as a kid that helping the cats is what I’d be doing in teh future, I wouldnt’ have believed you,” Bui said. “(Mini Cat Town) Is something the three of us get to do together as sisters and I look at our life thinking what could we possibly be doing that could be more fulfilling than this?”

You can reach Staff Writer Sara Edwards at 707-521-5487 or sara.edwards@pressdemocrat. com. On Twitter @sedwards380.