Lauren and her events manager Paige sat at a table in the main part of the café, hammering out ideas for an adoption event. Lauren hoped all this extra business they’d been getting in the wake of the Star Café closing meant some of the cats would be adopted by the affluent animal lovers in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood near downtown Brooklyn.
Lauren had gone for kind of a mod look when she’d decorated the main sitting area: bright colors, mid-century modern design, a Shag-esque retro mural on one wall that depicted cats drinking coffee. She loved this space. At first, she worried she’d grow to hate the bright colors, but there was so much visual interest in the room that she never tired of looking at it. There were, of course, structures for the cats to lounge on all over the space. She’d built some of them herself, with particleboard and some lime-green carpeting she’d gotten for a steep discount. There were also bins full of cat toys—Lauren was forever picking up little fur mice and balls with attached feathers from places where people might trip over them.
Diane breezed in with her customary cup of tea in her hand. She wore a pink caftan that flowed over her body and, without asking permission, sat at the table with Lauren and Paige.
Lauren didn’t shoo her away. Diane owned the building and the Cat Café, after all.
“Good afternoon, Diane,” Lauren said.
“Hello, dear. This place is hopping today.”
“I know. I might have to start imposing limits on how many people can sit in here at a time. Too many people stress out the cats.”
One of those cats, a tortie kitten named Chloe, hopped up on the table right then and began to investigate the half-eaten muffin on Lauren’s plate. Lauren scooped her up and put her in her lap.
“Have you met the new vet yet?” Diane asked.
“New vet?”
“The clinic hired a new vet who started there a few days ago. He’s a cutie.”
Lauren laughed. Diane was pushing seventy and retired from some corporate job she didn’t like to talk about. She had used her savings and the money her late partner had left her to buy this five-story apartment building with two storefronts on the first floor: the Cat Café and the Veterinary Clinic. Olivia Ling owned and operated the vet clinic, but the Cat Café had been Diane’s idea, and she technically owned the business as well as the space. She was a hands-off owner, though, and she let Lauren run the café however she liked, as long as she ran financial decisions by her, and Diane could come in for a cup of tea and some time with the cats free of charge whenever it struck her fancy. Diane reminded Lauren a lot of her own mother, although Diane was far more eccentric. Today, her short bleached blond hair had been styled into soft waves around her face, and she’d completed the look with a full face of makeup and purple cat-eye glasses.
And she loved gossip.
“I haven’t met the new vet,” Lauren said.
“You should go introduce yourself! He’s working today.”
Lauren caught Paige rolling her eyes just outside of Diane’s peripheral vision. Lauren had detected a bit of matchmaking fervor in Diane’s tone but chose to ignore it. “If we ever have a slow moment again, I’ll pop over and say hi.”
Diane sipped her tea and looked at Lauren over the top of the cup, her eyes sparkling. “See that you do. I’ve got a feeling about this one.”
Paige snorted. “The same way you had a feeling about that kid who works at the bookstore?”
Lauren sighed. Diane was hit-or-miss with the matchmaking.
“You don’t have to marry him,” Diane said. “Just go say hello. It’s in the best interest of your business anyway, since you will very likely be working together.”
Lauren raised an eyebrow. She could still detect a bit of mischief in Diane’s enigmatic smile, but she said, “I will.” She thought of the handsome guy who got coffee the other morning. Caleb. He was really cute, and Lauren wouldn’t have minded flirting a little—no harm in that, after all—but he hadn’t been back since, at least not while Lauren had been in the café.
“Is Mitch doing another one of those rescue events?” asked Diane as she leaned forward and peered at Lauren’s notes.
Lauren glanced at her notes and then back at Diane. Mitch was an old friend of Lauren’s, and he ran an organization that trapped feral cats and brought them to the Whitman Street Veterinary Clinic to be spayed or neutered before either organizing adoptions with Lauren or tagging and releasing the cats back into the feral colony that lived around the Brooklyn Museum. Some cats would not make good pets, but they could be prevented from making more cats. Mitch organized events to trap untagged cats about once a month in an attempt to humanely decrease the feral cat population in Brooklyn.
“They usually go out the third Thursday of the month,” Lauren said, flipping through her notes to find the printout of her calendar. “Why, do you want to go?”
“No, but my niece is interested.”
“Oh, great. I’ve got flyers behind the counter with all the information. Want me to get you one?”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll ask Monique on my way out. I’ll also keep an eye on things here if you want to go see the new vet now. And, hello, nice to see you!” Diane reached down and pet the head of a tuxedo cat who was rubbing against her leg.
“We can go over the rest of this later,” said Paige.
Traitor, Lauren mouthed to Paige. Then she stood. “Fine. I’ll go say hi. Keep an eye on that stripy orange cat. His name is Houdini because he thinks he’s an escape artist.”
“I’ve got this,” Diane said. “Go.”
***
Caleb pet the head of a French bulldog named Howard, whose tongue lolled out in appreciation. “He’ll be fine on the new diet,” he told the anxious pet parents. “I’ll write you a prescription for the new food. Rachel at the front desk can get you all set up with that.”
“Thank you so much, Dr. Fitch,” said the wife. “I appreciate that you helped him calm down so much. His old vet made him so nervous.”
“My pleasure.” With one last smile and nod, Caleb left Exam 1. Through the door to the waiting room, he heard Rachel say, “Hi, Lauren! Good to see you.”
He peeked through the little window in the door. He could only see her in profile, but it was indeed Lauren from the Cat Café. She had on a boxy denim jacket that obscured her figure somewhat, with her long hair splayed out around her shoulders, and she wore a friendly smile on her face.
Before he knew what he was doing, Caleb pushed through the door. On the pretense of giving Rachel the prescription for Howard’s new food, he pulled out his pad and scribbled down the patient’s name and the food he needed. He handed the slip to Rachel without really looking at her and said, “Hello again,” to Lauren.
Lauren looked a little startled. Her gaze traveled over him, probably taking in the white lab coat and the name tag. “You’re the new vet.”
“Uh, yes.”
Rachel cleared her throat. “Lauren, this is Dr. Caleb Fitch. Caleb, this is Lauren.”
Caleb couldn’t take his eyes off Lauren. It was like he’d conjured her.
“Lauren manages the Cat Café,” Rachel said.
She manages the café? “Oh,” said Caleb.
“I came over to introduce myself to the new vet because we will inevitably end up working together. All cats who live in the café come through here first. I didn’t realize you were the new vet.”
Caleb didn’t know how to interpret the way she’d said you, but he said, “Great. I look forward to working with you.”
She smiled, which Caleb took to mean she was pleasantly surprised, so that was something. “I mean, if I’d known, I would have given you a discount on the coffee or something.”
“It’s fine, really.”
“Let me make it up to you. Next time you get a break, come on over and I’ll hook you up with a cup of coffee and a pastry. We have really good blueberry scones.”
Caleb recognized this as an olive branch, not a date. Which was good, because he had no business dating so soon after the divorce. “Sure, I can do that.”
“Great. I gotta go, I was just coming by to say hi. So, hi! I’ll, uh, see you around, Caleb.”
He and Lauren could potentially spend a lot of time together, depending on what kind of cat turnover the café had. “How long has the Cat Café been open?” he asked Rachel after Lauren left.
“About a year.”
“Wow.” That was impressive for something that seemed like a fly-by-night idea. “And it’s popular?”
“Yeah. Pretty popular. She’s got a good group of regular customers, mostly people who can’t have pets at home for whatever reason but want to pet some cats. It’s therapeutic.”
“Sure.” Caleb recognized the therapeutic value of animal companions, but he still found the idea of a cat café a little silly. If one liked spending time with cats, why not just…get a cat?
Caleb loved animals, though he didn’t currently have pets because Kara had gotten their mixed breed rescue dog Jimmy in the divorce. Caleb still missed that dog.
And this was why he was never getting married again.
He cleared his throat as Howard led his owners back into the waiting room. “Howard here needs a bag of the Pro Diet SD formula,” he said to Rachel. He gave his spiel about feeding routines and where they could order more food, and once they were gone, it hit him that, well, he had a coffee date with Lauren from the Cat Café. And he was kind of looking forward to it.