Emily Samuelian grew up in a dog family. She’d never had any cats until she got her first one in college. Then she got a second.
“It grew into this crazy cat lady title,” Samuelian said.
She’s actually trying to maintain that nomenclature, having established the identity within the Independence community as the proprietor of the Little Pumpkin Cat Cafe.
Having sold her artwork at local farmers’ markets, Samuelian had also wanted to start a senior cat rescue for a couple years after graduation. She finally found the perfect location within the Little Mall on Main Street to combine her two passions.
She brought in her first cat, Fred, a big orange tabby and moved into current space a month later. Samuelian has successfully adopted out a couple so far and gotten more than 30 strays fixed, vaccinated and cleaned of parasites before being released back into feral colonies.
“I came to the sudden realization after couple years I really like doing this. I really want to keep rescuing them,” Samuelian said.
The community took notice. Last year, she won the Monmouth-Independence Chamber of Commerce New Business of the Year award.
“Winning was one of the biggest shocks. It’s amazing how much support this community has shown me. Most small businesses it takes a couple years to start seeing any revenue or actual earnings. Counting this and the farmers market earnings combined, we’re about $100 short of breaking even,” Samuelian.
But her dream is in jeopardy as her landlord has decided not to renew her lease at the end of September, just a month short of her one-year anniversary.
The Little Pumpkin Cat Cafe sits in the rear of the Little Mall on Main Street in Independence where shoppers can pet and/or adopt a cat while shopping homemade artwork.
By David Hayes
On Aug. 3, Samuelian’s landlord told her she’d received a complaint from a neighboring shop that there was a smell so bad it was coming out into the hallway and scaring away her customers.
Born without a sense of smell, Samuelian thought she’d taken every conceivable precaution.
“I do a really good job of cleaning and sanitizing in here because of the cats. I don’t want any illness or diseases to spread,” Samuelian said. “It has an air filter, dehumidifier and fans to circulate the air. I just don’t know where the problem is. I’ve never had a problem before. No one come in and say it stinks. I’ve had people say it smells like pumpkin, coffee, chocolate.”
After all her efforts to address the issue, Samuelian said she never heard back from her landlord until getting notice Aug. 13 her lease would not be renewed.
Samuelian tried to bargain with her landlord to get from August’s slow season and through the busy holiday season. She was even willing to pay an extra $100 a month in rent. She said the landlord didn’t respond to any of her proposals.
“This is the slow season right now. So, I will have no job, nowhere for any of the cats to go. I will have no building and it’s right before the holiday season,” she said.
So, for the next month, her primary focus is getting enough funding to buy a building.
“If we do that, we won’t have to forcefully rehome all the cats. Our emphasis is rescuing cats with special needs… with specific care standards. If that’s broken, they get pretty stressed out. They suffer for that,” Samuelian.
She has her eyes on a two-story home for sale on Monmouth Street next to “Stonehenge” (the unfinished business structure). It has multiple rooms for both her business and living space with ample parking space out back, where she can install ADA ramp access.
“The only other spaces we’ve found for rent in town we wouldn’t be able to make wheelchair, walker accessible. That’s one of my biggest things,” Samuelian said. “It would be a lot nicer in there. And being on the street would be a huge, huge deal for us.”
However, the home hit the market for $575,000. She sees getting a traditional bank loan near impossible.
“As a recent 21-year-old graduate with no credit history in charge of a fledgling 501(c) business, it’s out of question,” she said.
She’s pursuing fund raising and private investors.
Samuelian doesn’t want to give up on a need the community around her has expressed.
“I’ve heard a lot of people saying we need this kind of thing. A lot of the bigger rescues won’t come out to this area for a lot of stuff. And there’s not a lot of help for stray cats in this area either,” Samuelian said. “It’s hard for people who don’t have the bank accounts to back it up to see cats out on the street and want to help but do not have resources for that. That’s why we want to stay in Monmouth, Independence and not scoot any farther out.”
Ben Madilynn
