Mau House Cat Hotel owner Julie Pledger, of Richmond, gets a kiss from her foster cat Jack while at her business in Richmond, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. The Mau House Cat Hotel is a cage free boarding hotel with 12 private rooms for cats only. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
RICHMOND — At Mau House Cat Hotel, a 12-room operation in Richmond, guests are welcome to climb as high as possible, lounge in the windowsill or hide away to do absolutely nothing at all.
Julie Pledger opened Mau House Cat Hotel on the corner of Macdonald Avenue and 29th Street in 2019 after years of researching the types of services offered to cats and their owners across the world.
The hotel is cage free, featuring private, homey rooms ranging from 20 square feet to 120 square feet. Each unit has at least one window and furniture to climb, and each cat is individually let out to roam an hour a day. Additional amenities are also available, like cat grass, scratchers, brushing, catnip and flea treatment.
Pledger’s vision for the Mau House Cat Hotel was born out of her own struggle eight years ago to find a pet sitting facility that would treat her cats as kindly as they did her dogs.
She believed there was demand for more hands-on cat care and she seems to be right. Mau House is typically booked months in advance, and when a last-minute opening does occur, those on her waitlist are eager to snatch it up.
We recently asked Pledger about Mau House. Her answers are edited for length and clarity.
Q: Where did the name for Mau House come from?
A: Mau is the Egyptian word for cat, which they did name after the sound of course, and I love the whole Egyptian culture of how they appreciate cats. So that’s part of why I went with it. It also sounds nice too.
Q: What inspired you to start a cat hotel business?
A: I went to board my cat and my dog at the same place and I was shocked at where they were going to put my cat, they were going to put my cat in a 2-foot cube, a cage. Usually I could pay to have my dog walked so I asked to pay extra for someone to play with my cat and the woman laughed. I left there in tears because it was obvious cats were second-class citizens, at that facility at least.
I started researching cat boarding in general and that seemed to be the case at most places — there were a few places in the Bay Area that were cat only. I started looking worldwide as well to see how other cultures treat cat boarding and I saw some really cool stuff and thought we need something like that here.
Cats need to be treated a bit better here and people respond really well with that idea.
Q: What was it like opening your doors just months before the pandemic shut the world down?
A: We opened Nov. 1, 2019, and had an amazing holiday season because we were the only place that had any availability. Then everything shut down. Once we were able to legally open again, people still had to board for various reasons. It was necessity boarding. Nobody was boarding for the fun of it.
We had one family who still had to go help grandma and they would quarantine for two weeks and do a porch drop off to go help grandma. It was things like that, where the cat just could not be in the home.
But at the same time, what really helped us was that veterinary offices that used to board stopped boarding altogether once the pandemic started. A lot of them didn’t start up again and a lot of boarding facilities, especially cat only boarding facilities closed. I’m not sure why but some never opened up again sadly, but it kept us going during those times.
Q: Did you always see yourself opening a cat hotel?
A: It’s not super surprising. One of my childhood best friends came to visit recently and said this is so you. I’ve always been animal crazy so, no, it’s not super surprising. I feel like well it’s about time this happened.
Q: What does the day-to-day operation at a cat hotel look like?
A: First thing of course is we’ve got live animals seven days a week, 24/7, so my top priority of course is getting here and feeding everybody breakfast. It’s a little like feeding time at the zoo. We get everybody fed and cleaned up and satisfied, and I can get to emails, reservation requests, that sort of thing.
Of course there’s always people coming and going as well, that sort of thing, so we’re getting the rooms ready for the next people. We have to empty and sanitize and clean and set up the rooms for the next people.
Q: What are some common misconceptions about cats you hear often?
A: Everything people say about cats is all wrong. Some of it is right about some cats. But people say they’re solitary animals, that’s definitely not true. And I think a lot of people think cats are mean or vengeful, it’s just not true.
What I often say is people who don’t like cats, they just don’t like the fact that cats are super aware of their autonomy. They’re not willing to give that up just because someone wants them to. I really respect that about cats and I think people can learn a lot from that honestly.
Julie Pledger
Age: 52
Position: Co-founder and owner
Residence: Richmond
Hometown: Richmond
5 things to know about Julie
1. Julie is not just a cat person. She’s got a small zoo at home — dogs, cats, chickens, a snake and a chameleon.
2. Julie is level 49 in Pokémon Go.
3. Julie has been vegan for seven years.
4. Julie was a locksmith in a previous life
5. Julie enjoys cubing (as in Rubik’s)
Originally published at Sierra Lopez