Mesilla Valley Mall welcoming El Paso-based cat café this spring. Here's what we know.

Leah Romero, Las Cruces Sun-News
·3 min read
For animal service centers, “kitten season” starts in the spring as the days get longer.
For animal service centers, “kitten season” starts in the spring as the days get longer.

LAS CRUCES – The Mesilla Valley Mall will soon be home to Las Cruces’ first cat café, featuring adoptable animals and fun beverages.

Owners of El Paso’s Sun City Kitty are in the process of opening a second location, which will be called Chile City Kitty in a nod to New Mexico’s beloved peppers. Co-owner Megan Oslund said the goal is to open in Las Cruces by late April, coinciding with the original location’s first anniversary.

The business takes appointments for 30-minute or one-hour sessions with the cats, or people can walk in and enjoy the cat lounge. The café is separated from the cat lounge and offers coffees, teas and seasonal drinks.

“We’ve had a lot of really successful adoptions. We’ve taken a lot of pressure off of El Paso Animal Services, which has been great,” Oslund said. “It’s just something that we’ve enjoyed a lot and so we wanted to do a second (café) pretty much immediately.”

Customers are invited to interact with cats available for adoption in a fun, safe environment. Cats are rescued from El Paso Animal Services Center, reducing the number of cats housed at the shelter.

Oslund said the owners already have relationships with several Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) programs in Las Cruces. These partnerships will help address the area’s population of feral cats. She added that working with Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley would be ideal, but plans are not yet in place.

A feral cat dips into a irrigation ditch in Las Cruces on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021.
A feral cat dips into a irrigation ditch in Las Cruces on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021.

“We can only house 12 to 15 cats at a time max (in El Paso) and we have adopted out nearly 100 cats this year, so we have about a full turnover rate every month,” Oslund said.

She added that the space in the Mesilla Valley Mall is about 40% larger than the original location meaning they should be able to house an added four to five cats at a time.

Chile City Kitty is moving into the space formerly occupied by Regis Hairstylist, right next to Women’s Dillard’s. The plan is to start hiring in early April.

“It’s something new and it’s innovative and exciting, so I think they will be a good fit for our mall,” said Loretta Piña, general manager of the Mesilla Valley Mall.

There are only three vacant tenant spaces inside the mall, Piña added, leaving the Mesilla Valley Mall at 95% capacity. She said this level of occupancy has likely not been seen since the early 1990s and that she is hoping to fill all the last spaces within the year.

“There’s always something new to see here, so I’m glad that people are coming back and kind of establishing the mall as a place to come and socialize and shop and exercise,” she said. “It’s what I was always hoping to see and so I feel like we’re getting there.”

More information about Sun City Kitty can be found on their website, suncitykitty.com.

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Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News and can be reached at 575-418-3442, LRomero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Mesilla Valley Mall welcoming El Paso-based cat café this spring. Here's what we know.