REGINA -- The owner of Excalipurr Cat Café is sharing her financial struggles as she waits to welcome back customers to in-person dining.
The adorable adoptable kittens at the Excalipurr Cat Café haven’t had the chance to socialize with the public for a few months.
"We have people coming out to spend time with the cats so not being able to have that public space for people to come in has really downsized our foot traffic. We don't have people coming in to see the cats so it’s hit us really hard,” Chelsey Legendre, the owner of the café said.
On March 27, restaurants in the Queen City had to switch to takeout or delivery only as COVID-19 cases surged.
Last week, Legendre made a post explaining the café was at risk of having to close. Explaining in part “In all honesty and transparency we didn’t even bring in enough profit last month to cover rent. We don’t get enough foot traffic to keep the café open at this time and I don’t know what this month will look like.”
“I made the point of saying to our customers ‘hey, I'm going to be super honest with you, I want to be transparent with you I don't want you guys to wake up one morning and be like hey we're sorry we're closing down’, so it was more so just like a hey this is our update like we're still pushing through, but we are struggling,” Legendre said.
After some community members saw the post, multiple go-fund-me pages were created and other small businesses have decided to give portions of their sales to the cafe.
"I'm overwhelmed. I’ve still been scrolling through all my messages and trying to get back to everybody and orders and I feel the love!” Legendre said Sunday. “The community support has been absolutely amazing, I couldn't be happier. I'm so thankful and I wish I could hug everybody.”
The provincial government announced on May 17 restaurants will be able to allow in person dining, but the café isn’t sure if that will mean people are allowed to go and visit the cats.
"With that announcement, I’m still kind of looking into all the restrictions and how it's going to affect our cat room in particular as everybody's very eager to come in and see the kitties. But hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll be able to open, if not right on the seventeenth around there once we kind of figure out how all those restrictions affect us,” Legendre said.
The café currently has 16 cats available for adoption.
