All things feline, including cats themselves, are the stars at this new Retro Row boutique

A cat-themed boutique, art gallery and adoption center will hold its grand opening Friday on Retro Row.

You’ll also find plenty of real, live feline friends inside Cool Cat Collective . Anyone who walks into the shop on Fourth Street near Temple Avenue can interact with the cats that live in a protected playground inside the shop.

Husband and wife Matt and Jena Carr are opening the store with the goal of helping reduce the stray cat population throughout Los Angeles County.

“We wanted to create another space where cats could come get exposure to people in a kind of a different way,” Jena said.

They plan to house adoptable cats at the boutique and spread awareness by selling cat-related items and cat-themed prints from featured artists.

Through a partnership with TippedEars , a cat rescue that works primarily in Compton, Cool Cat Collective will be a temporary home for cats waiting to be adopted or fostered.

Ultimately, the couple’s goal is to sponsor efforts to spay or neuter as many stray cats as possible. The store will donate 20% of profits to a different nonprofit organization each month focused on stemming the stray cat population.

Each female cat can start having kittens at four months old and can have three or four litters per year with four to eight kittens in each, Jena said.

“Some [stray cats] do really well, they like to live in colonies that have dedicated feeders and all that, but for young kittens, we often find them with eye infections or other issues,” she said.

Jena, who was born and raised in Long Beach, grew up shopping on Retro Row.

When space on Fourth Street became available, the couple pounced.

“We weren’t actually really quite ready yet, but this is the perfect spot across the region. Being next to the other great small businesses is super important,” said Matt, who built all of the furniture in the boutique by hand with assistance from YouTube.

Matt also built and set up a wooden catwalk that leads from the cat enclosure to a window at the front of the store, where the felines can enjoy the sights of passersby on Fourth Street.

The pair moved to Long Beach a little over two years ago after spending a decade-and-a-half in Matt’s hometown of Washington D.C.

For nearly a decade, they owned and operated a popular neighborhood cafe named Little Red Fox.

Ultimately, the fast pace of the business and Washington D.C. led them to close shop and move across the country with their 10-year-old son and five cats.

“[In Long Beach] you’re allowed to kind of be a little weirder, a little funkier and it’s one of the things I loved growing up,” Jena said.

Almost immediately after moving, Jena began volunteering at local animal shelters and different rescues aiming to help animals despite rapidly rising veterinary costs.

Through that work, she encountered a local veterinarian who does high-volume spay and neuters out of a mobile clinic.

Cool Cat Collective hopes to host similar mobile clinics in the parking lot adjacent to the boutique and fund them through the boutique’s sales along with auctioning off items from the “Cat Museum” in the back of the store. The first museum exhibit is Cats in Comics and the first artist featured in the space is Nicholas Vargas , whom the couple met at Cat & Cloud Coffee in Santa Cruz.

His comic-style art often features cats, and the couple turned one of his doodles into a Cool Cat Collective hat. Fifty copies of two of Vargas’ works are available for purchase at the boutique.

“We have serious goals in terms of helping cats and stuff but we absolutely do not take ourselves seriously,” Matt said. “We just want to be like a fun, goofy, silly space that people can come in and feel good, laugh, make their day a little lighter.”

Cool Cat Collective is at 2741 E Fourth Street. Starting Friday, it will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

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