BDB: Is Brevard getting a cat cafe?! Heroes in Vero Beach and a BOGO from SpaceX

Jessica Saggio
Florida Today

 

Is Brevard getting a cat cafe?! Help me solve the mystery!

 

Are we getting a cat cafe?!

Ever heard of a cat café? It’s a real thing and it’s exactly what it sounds like: A café with cats.

Brace yourselves because it’s a trend that is catching on in Florida, and lord knows it could be only a matter of time before Brevard ventures into this new, cat-infiltrated territory. We’ll get into that in a minute, because I think it’s already in the works.

There are already a handful of these cat cafes in the state. The first was in South Florida, a place called Gato Café (the concept was actually an idea presented on the show "Shark Tank").

Orlando has since jumped on board (The Orlando Cat Cafe) and now Tallahassee is getting a cat café.

How they work is you come in, grab a cup of coffee, maybe a nice pastry, sit back, relax and enjoy a room full of cats.

Yes, yes, I know this screams unsanitary, but I guess the loophole here is you have to have the café separate from the room full of cats for the Florida Department of Health to give you the thumbs up.

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The cats in the room are also typically up for adoption, so the café serves a dual purpose.

At Orlando Cat Cafe, visitors pay a fee to sip their chai tea lattes in the cat room, and the business even encourages people to sign up for a seat in advance. This is not the case everywhere, this place is just that popular.

OK, so talk about burying the lead. There’s a chance Brevard could be getting its very first cat café. You heard me. While researching the topic, I stumbled upon an LLC registered in Palm Bay called Hairy Purrer’s Cat Café. There’s a Facebook page, a website and everything.

The catch? I’ve been trying for a week to get hold of the woman who registered the LLC. Nothing. Nada.

The Facebook page says Hairy Purrer’s has a partnership with the SPCA of Brevard, so I contacted them. I was told they were approached in January, agreed to a partnership, but never heard anything again.

"About 6 months ago, a woman came to us asking if we would be interested in partnering with her about doing some sort of cat cafe," said Susan Naylor, SPCA of BRevard spokeswoman. "We agreed that we'd supply cats, but we haven't heard anything else from her since then."

So Brevard may or may not be getting its own cat café. There’s no location specified and the City of Palm Bay planning and zoning folks haven’t heard a word about it. Cliff hanger, I know. If you’ve heard about this and know the woman behind the whole thing (her name is Summer), ask her to contact me! Are we getting a cat café or what!?

If you have the skinny, email me! Jsaggio@floridatoday.com.

More:Cat cafe to come to Tallahassee

Prepare to be amazed

It was like the scene out of a movie, police say.

Picture this. A man dangling over the Alma Lee Loy Bridge in Vero Beach. The only thing separating him between life and certain death was the hand of a police officer who caught him mid-air.

Another officer jumped in to help tug and pull the man back over the railing.

Yeah, we’ve seen this scene countless times in movies, but how often can we say it’s actually played out in REAL LIFE?!

Over the weekend, police responded to a call that a suicidal man was preparing to jump from the south side of the bridge, which spans across the Indian River Lagoon and Intracoastal Waterway. When police arrived, they found the man with his feet over the side of the bridge, ready to jump.

“It looked like the guy made a move to go off and jump,” said Officer Anna Carden. “So (an officer) grabs his arm and just holds him by one hand over the bridge while (another officer) jumps up on the railing and just, like, pulls him over to the other side.”

The man wasn’t injured, and was taken to a mental health facility under Florida’s Baker Act.

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Wow. Somebody buy those officers a beer!

More:Vero Beach police officers save bridge jumper in mid-air Friday afternoon

Two for one!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Friday, June 23, 2017.  The previously flown booster is carrying a Bulgarian communications satellite.

Over the weekend, SpaceX marked another milestone. Again. #Slay

Publix has nothing on this BOGO. SpaceX showed the world it can launch two Falcon 9 rockets in one weekend. On Friday, the company launched from here on the Space Coast, and not even a full two days later it launched another rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The Friday launch carried an 8,000-pound Bulgarian telecommunications satellite. It successfully lifted off from the Cape at 3:10 p.m., delivered the satellite and then landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship out in the ocean eight-and-a-half minutes later.

Sunday, an identical rocket launched on the West Coast and landed on the “Just Read the Instructions” drone ship in the Pacific.

In case you’re wondering where SpaceX got the names for the drone ships, enter a new level of nerdiness. They’re named in honor of a legendary Sci-Fi author. There’s sentiment, though, the author died of cancer in 2013.

More:SpaceX targets rapid turnaround with Sunday Falcon 9 launch

About BDB:


Boiled Down Brevard is an irreverent daily news column that discusses Brevard's biggest headlines with a little fun along the way. Go ahead, hop on this crazy train because things get pretty weird. To get BDB daily, download the Florida Today app and allow notifications. We'll send you an alert every morning to get your day started with a smile. Contact Saggio at Jsaggio@FloridaToday.com