(cats meowing) (meow) (upbeat music) - Colony Cafe is a bistro, bar and cat cafe.

We're set up with a cafe downstairs, and then there's a separate space with adoptable cats upstairs.

And you can come up here with your bottle of wine, and it's just a relaxing way to spend the hour.

(meow) We like to say it's cheaper than therapy.

We like to think it's a win-win for both humans and cats.

The cats get socialized, so they are not living in kennels at a shelter, and humans get to interact with them in a really relaxing environment.

And if they're interested in adopting, they get to maybe pick their new pet.

(upbeat music) We offer a small bistro menu, people can get delicious food that's hand made and wine lists that we've curated.

Anything we offer can be brought upstairs, so it's not just coming in and grabbing a cookie, it's really the whole experience of having some nice food, talking with your friends, having some friendly cats, we think it's really unique.

(upbeat music) - As a regular, I generally tend to show up about once a week or so.

It's a great place to just hang out, have a coffee, hang out with a cat, and just get my work done, but be surrounded by little tiny animals that I might not otherwise see.

- It's a special avenue for people to come to to talk.

It's a place where you can really get to know a cat before you decide to take them home.

Or even if you didn't even know that you were interested in a cat at that moment in time, you just happen to fall in love while you're here.

This is Tie, he's 13, he is part of a bonded pair.

Sometimes I feel like people pass over the older cats.

Just because they're a little bit worried that they won't have as much time with them.

I think that is great here, too, 'cause you fall in love with a cat that you don't know is 10 years old, and you see how active and playful that they still are.

- We've had birthday parties, we've had marriage proposals, we had one wedding in the cat loft.

- We also just had Jackson Galaxy, the cat daddy was here, in the Colony Cat Loft.

- And here we are at Colony Cafe, they got the coffee, they got the wine, they got the cat lovers, and of course, they got the cats.

So look at 273 adoptions.

- Yes, and fewer than 20 are kittens.

Colony Cafe partners with Animal Friends, which is a big shelter in the North Hills of Pittsburgh.

They provide us with all the cats.

We kind of act like a high-volume foster home for them.

- Animal Friends is so many things.

We service dogs, cats, and rabbits.

We have a low-cost spay/neuter clinic, we have low-cost wellness services for pet owners, we also have pet therapy programs, we have children's classes, we have camps, we've got just about something for everybody.

With Colony Cafe, when they approached us to be their exclusive shelter partner, of course we jumped at the chance, because in our region in Pittsburgh, we do have a pet overpopulation crisis.

We have, at any given time, up to 250 homeless dogs, cats and rabbits, and we need adopters to come in and adopt so that we can help more.

Since our partnership with Colony Cafe has started, more than 200 cats have found homes.

So, it's just really great, we really want to keep up the partnership with them, they're fabulous.

It's so important to me for people to understand that animals are such a big part of our lives, and how much more you can be enriched with one in your life.

Yeah (laugh) - One of the things I think our guests really like about this environment is the interaction with cats.

It's been scientifically studied to be a relaxing influence on humans.

It can lower blood pressure, it can reduce stress levels, and I see it with my own eyes.

It's just a relaxing thing to have a soft, warm, purring animal around you.

(upbeat music) (cats meowing)