The short version: we couldn't find it anywhere else. The long version is below, probably best read with a cat on your lap.
We were trying to make a newsletter.
The original plan was a weekly newsletter about productivity software. Six editions went out. Three people read them. One of them was the founder's mother, who kept writing back with notes about the line spacing.
In the twelfth week, a cat walked across the keyboard mid-draft and pressed publish on a mostly-empty email. All three subscribers replied within the hour. Two of them attached photos of their own cats. The newsletter, in a sense, wrote itself.
We ran a survey. Zero people wanted to hear more about productivity software. Forty-one people wanted to show us their cat.
The Notion doc was titled "cats??" and filled with tabs: the primordial pouch, the etymology of "clowder," one long thread about Isaac Newton, a draft logo, a domain registration receipt. Both of the people who did this were, by their own admission, supposed to be doing something else.
Dr. M. Purrkins joined after sending us a six-page astrology pitch that was taken seriously by exactly the wrong person. The Cat Facts Library opened the next week with 47 entries, citations included, because the Librarian insisted.
The Purrthday Calendar was — and we maintain this — a clerical accident. Someone added a birthday field to the cat profile and then forgot to hide the output page. It is now the second-most-used feature on the site.
1,247 members. Counting, but not in an aspirational way.
We do not have a business plan. We have an inbox, a group chat, and a shared spreadsheet of who owes what on the hosting bill. This is, structurally, a hobby we have not yet found a reason to stop.
We don't want to be the biggest cat community on the internet. There are plenty of those, and they are exhausting. We want to be the one you keep a tab open for — the one your group chat has started to forward things from.
If you want to be here, you should probably be here. If you don't, there are roughly 47,000 other places online that want you more. We're fine with that. The join button is elsewhere on this page. There is no pop-up.
The House Rules
The people
We all have jobs, and then we also have this.
Founder, perpetual lurker
Owned by Barnaby (Maine Coon, 4, emotionally distant but present).
Resident astrologer
Does not have a PhD. Has read a concerning number of books about it.
Cat Facts librarian
Has bought a cat's worth of primary sources. Very serious about citations.
Community, moderation
Has three cats. Referees their daily disputes with the calm of someone who has genuinely given up.
Because someone always asks
We don't have ads. We don't have a third-party tracker on this site. We will never email you without asking first.
If that's the goal, Instagram is two clicks away. We're a place to enjoy cats without turning them into content-machines.
The Tabby and Lion tiers pay the hosting, the astrologer, and occasionally a cat tax. That's it. No grand mission statement.
You got it. Let's move on.
Still here?
Join the free tier. Look around for a week. Leave if you want. We'll still be here.