About Catitude Cafe
Our Mission
To provide a safe, welcoming space for cats and humans to interact through reading, relaxing and playing together and to find "furever" friends.
About the Owner
Brenda (Wyse) Summers is a long-time Goshen resident, Goshen College alum, educator, and cat lover. Brenda taught elementary and middle grade students for nearly 30 years at Chicago Mennonite Learning Center (Chicago, IL), in Elkhart Community Schools, and, up until 2 years ago, with Concord Community Schools, before resigning to better focus on her dream of opening a cat lounge in downtown Goshen. Brenda began her brave thinking and dreambuilding journey in 2019, studying under Mary Morrissey and the Brave Thinking Institute, envisioning a life she loved, and taking brave steps in faith to achieve it. She became a certified DreamBuilder coach herself, in 2024. She is so happy and grateful for the support of her family, for her fiance, Dan, and for all the amazing teachers, students and friends that she’s known, met or reconnected with (at just the right time), so that her dream is now her reality. She is living a life she loves!
The Inspiration
I was asked at a DreamBuilder Live event in 2020 where I felt longing or discontent in my life and what I would love my life to be like if time and money were no object. During that 3-day workshop, a baby dream of having a cat reading room in Goshen was born. Over the next two years, I visited cat cafes in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Tennessee, and the dream grew into Catitude (spelled like “gratitude”), a cat-themed gift shop attached to a large cat lounge that would partner with a rescue (Here Kitty Kitty Rescue) to showcase adoptable cats while providing a safe, welcoming space for humans to interact with cats and connect with others in the community.
Future Goals
I would love to eventually launch Mobile Catitude, taking select cats and the cat tent into elementary schools for struggling readers to read to, to Goshen College during exams, and to visit Greencroft and other retirement communities.