Books & Meows: First Quad Cities nonprofit cat lounge receives help from the community to open sooner

Jackson Rozinsky
·2 min read

A nonprofit cat lounge is making its way into the Quad Cities. It’s the first of of its kind in the area. To open, the owner of Books & Meows needed help from the community.

“It’s going to be a used book store cat lounge,” said Nicole Puryear, owner of Books & Meows. “We’ll have seating, we’ll have cat houses on the walls. This is a way that I can still be involved with animals and help out. Also, I can help those people who maybe have someone in their family who is allergic to cats, but they can still come in and enjoy the cats.”

The owner of Books & Meows in Davenport is looking forward to her grand opening. But that grand opening won’t happen without the community’s help.

Initially, Books & Meows needed financial help to get the nonprofit cat lounge up and running. With the help of a Quad Cities carpenter, she cut costs down by thousands of dollars.

“First thing we did is start removing it and that just brought her cost down tremendously,” said Cody Yote, a volunteer carpenter for Books & Meows. “Her first bill was $8-9,000, and now she’s only asking for $2,000 for donations.”

Due to Iowa state law, the nonprofit needs to install waterproof flooring before opening.

Yote helped that process by volunteering his time.

“I just don’t think there’s enough places around here for animals,” Yote said. “I love animals, that’s the main thing. I want more places like this locally.”

With the community’s help, Puryear now just needs money to purchase the new flooring materials.

“It blows me away that somebody would do that and volunteer to help for nothing,” Puryear said. “It’s amazing.”

A GoFundMe was posted to help with flooring costs.

“We’re just kind of waiting for donations,” Yote said. “Then she’s going to go purchase the flooring. As soon as she purchases it, we’re going to make time and get it in here as soon as we can.”

The GoFundMe can be found here.

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