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It’s a bit of a cat-astrophe at a local cat café in downtown Regina.
The front window of the Excalipurr Cat Cafe was smashed open on Thursday morning and left with a large hole facing onto the street.
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Chelsey Legendre is the owner of the café, which lets people enjoy drinks and food while also snuggling with adoptable furry felines. She said she got the call about the broken window from police at around 8 a.m.
“My first question to them was if the cats were OK, just because we’re right out onto Albert Street. So if anything was to happen to them, it would be pretty bad,” she said.
Luckily, Legendre said, all 20 cats at the café are safe and sound, and it doesn’t look like anyone entered the building. She said she’s grateful it was the window on the café side that was smashed, and not the side where the cats live.
“It’s definitely shocking,” she said. “It’s saddening, but really as long as the cats were OK, I was OK.”
Legandre said café staff were able to clean up the glass and patch up the window as best as they could.
“For us, it’s a bit of a bigger concern, because we do have cats in the space. So if we have a big hole in the window, we can’t really be open because we don’t want cats escaping out onto Albert Street,” she said.
But as of around 10 a.m. Legandre said she was in the process of getting the window boarded up, while also pricing how much it will cost to get the window replaced.
“I don’t even know really what to expect, but a big expense like this is going to definitely be a hit to us,” the café owner said.
Legandre said the vandalism was not something she was expecting to deal with, but it’s not uncommon in the neighbourhood.
“We see it happen to surrounding businesses around us in the community, which is always sad to see, but we’ve been really lucky,” she said.
“We’ve been here for almost eight years, and haven’t had any sort of vandalism like this.”
Moving forward, Legandre said she will be looking at taking extra precautions to make sure the windows – especially those on the side where the cat room is – are better protected.
