Chiara's Cat Café | #1 The Beginning
Chiara Palmeri studies English Language & Culture at UU. She is currently trying to open a cat café in the USP. Here she is blogging about her entrepreneurial journey.
Of all the words I could have used to describe myself, entrepreneurial was never one of them. I was aware of my creativity, of my problem-solving attitude and incredible stubbornness, but before November 2023, I could have never imagined I would have ended up seeing myself as entrepreneurial.
It all started as a joke: I wrote an article about it for DUB (What if the university had a panic room filled with cats? | DUB (uu.nl)) in which I expressed my desire for the university to adopt some cats from a shelter and allow students to take care of them. Cuddling with cats has been scientifically proven to be an amazing remedy for anxiety, stress, and even panic attacks, and as I struggle with academic stress and mental illness as well as many of my friends and classmates, we all agreed that a safe place to run to during those moments of panic would be a great addition to the campus.
As I posted the article, forgetting about it after a few hours, I received an email from Bianca, the amazing community manager of the Centre for Entrepreneurship: “Your idea sounds awesome and I can imagine that a lot more people would be in support of it, so it doesn’t just need to stay an idea. If you’d like, I’d love to sit together, have a coffee and be your ping pong buddy to think along what could be your next step in making that cat café on campus happen”. Honestly? I was terrified. I had no idea who Bianca was or what the centre was about, but I pushed myself to go either way. After all, what did I have to lose? I remember seeing Bianca for the first time and realising how self-confident and sweet she was to me, a perfect stranger, and decided I needed more people like that in my university experience.
Honestly? I was terrified.
Not so long after our first meeting, I was transferred to my fantastic student coach, Stijn, who is still helping me nowadays with the project. Yes, my idea ended up being an actual project that is still going strong. The first thing I needed was a team, as the project was way too big to take care of on my own, and therefore a very close friend of mine designed the most adorable flyer, featuring my cat, Emilia, who is the one who actually gave me the idea in the first place. I pinned the flyers around campus, and in no time I found a number of incredible people willing to help.
What happened then? Well, it is a rather long story. Stay tuned for the next blog!
At the UU Centre for Entrepreneurship, we encourage students to try and be entrepreneurial. Being entrepreneurial is all about being creative and action-oriented, to create something new that has value for others. In this series, we give the floor to students that are part of our entrepreneurial community.