(Photo by Yerlin Matu / Unsplash)

“Life is too short,” says Kristin Cowan. “I really care about cats, and I want to help out. I also really love wine.”

And so the 29-year-old intelligence analyst decided to open up a cat cafe that doubles as a wine bar in Alexandria.

Cowan is actively scouting locations on or near Old Town’s King Street (though she’s open to the idea of being in another walkable neighborhood in Alexandria) after raising $25,500 on Kickstarter earlier this year. She aims to be in business within the next few months.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a cat cafe must be in want of a cat pun for its name. The only question, then, was which to pick.

A self-described “huge colonial history nerd,” Cowan played with ideas related to her idol, John Adams. Then a friend suggested Meownt Furrnan. “I thought that was a little much,” Cowan says, but it led her to the cat’s meow: Mount Purrnon.

In addition to attracting feline fans and oenophiles, Cowan aims to make make Mount Purrnon a destination where visitors can also learn about local history, by offering reference guides, maps, and books about Old Town Alexandria.

Like most cat cafes, the residents will be available to adopt (Cowan says she is finalizing an agreement with an area shelter organization) and food service will be limited to prepackaged items so as not to run afoul of health department regulations. Plans are to have two separate areas, the wine bar and the cat space.

“If [visitors] want to go in the cat room with the red wine, it’s up to them,” says Cowan, adding that she is looking into buying particularly sturdy glasses.

The area’s first and only cat cafe, Georgetown’s Crumbs & Whiskers, was big news back in 2015 (we admittedly wrote no fewer than seven posts about it, and you better believe that you people clicked on all of them). Around the same time, there was an effort to bring a different cat cafe, the pHinicky pHeline to Northern Virginia. Despite a crowdfunding campaign, nothing came of it.

But Cowan is already looking forward to throwing open the doors and hosting events: yoga, trivia, and movie nights are in the cards, along with the possibility of a peer support group (she’s currently getting a masters degree in psychology).

A couple hundred people have been closely following her progress.

“When I tell people, they’re super excited,” Cowan says. “If not for cats, at least for wine.”