Cat lovers are so rock and roll.
Take Jersey Shore native DJ Bornschein, founder and president of Catsburypark Cat Cafe and Tea House and the Catsbury Park Convention, add in the Asbury Park locale, and you will find adorable rescue cats ready to steal the hearts of patrons and find new homes.
A late-to-the-game cat lover, Bornschein did not grow up with cats. He was 33 when he first lived with cats, which quickly led to a new life mission. He founded Catsburypark in 2017, stemming from his pure passion for all things feline. The venture of love has been a phenomenal success. Bornschein and his staff are currently gearing up for the Catsbury Convention, which returns after a five-year hiatus on Saturday, October 5, at Bell Works in Holmdel.
A seasoned music industry veteran, Bornschein currently tours the world as a member of Coldplay’s advance team and was the stage manager/tech for NJ’s own Bouncing Souls. He also joined the band onstage playing keyboards, guitar and accordion, and lending backing vocals when needed. Earlier in his career, Bornschein released his own albums with DIY bands Full Speed Ahead (where he was on guitar) and Let It Burn (where he was on vocals and guitar).
He credits his do-it-yourself work ethic, business savvy and industry know-how as guiding forces in deftly navigating the formidable tasks and logistics of operating a very successful cafe and large-scale convention.
The family-friendly Catsburypark Convention features a pop-up cat cafe with precious rescue kittens that can reduce humans to baby talk, a vendor village with some 50 to 60 merchants, and a cat-themed pop-up tattoo space. There are also interactive events, arts and crafts for kids, and educational talks about wellness, rescues, and Trap-Neuter-Release programs. Proceeds benefit Catsburypark and their partner charities.
Guest speaker Hannah Shaw, also known as the Kitten Lady, is one of the non-feline stars of the show. She has authored several books, including the New York Times Bestseller, Tiny but Mighty: Kitten Lady’s Guide to Saving the Most Vulnerable Felines.
We spoke to Bornschein for this wide-ranging interview that chronicles his fascinating journey in seamlessly blending his lives as a dedicated musician and stalwart feline advocate.
Photo courtesy of DJ Bornschein
Are you a life-long cat lover?
Coincidentally enough, I grew up with no pets ever. It’s funny; my mother is allergic to cats, dogs, grass – you mention it and my mom’s allergic to it. I met a woman and we moved in together and she had cats. That’s when I fell in love with cats. I was actually apprehensive with moving in, just because I was apprehensive about living with cats. I was thinking, “I don’t want to get cat hair on everything,’” and all the ignorant kinds of things that people say that have never been around animals. The relationship with her ended, but my love for cats continued.
After I had the two cats (they were four or five), about a month in, if not less, I distinctly remember looking up on YouTube how to properly hold a cat – like he way you’re afraid of with a baby, holding it the wrong way. They are now 16 and 17, and both really healthy for their ages. The male cat is my best friend and the female is totally like a daddy’s girl. She’s obsessed with me.
What inspired you to open Catsbury Park?
Around that time when I was living in the Bay Area, the first cat cafe in the United States, Cat Town Cafe, opened in Oakland, and it was getting a lot of press as you would imagine. I heard about it when I had a recently found love for all things feline, so that was something on my radar that I definitely needed to check out. All the cats in the cafe were up for adoption. When I learned about it, I was really drawn to the concept. I knew that I would move back to the shore and wanted to have something like that. In the 2010s, Asbury Park was blowing up and I thought, “I should do something here. I should be part of how this town is growing.” I was born and raised in this area. It felt right. I had a vision that I could do what Cat Town was doing and do it in Asbury. It felt like a cat cafe and a cat rescue made sense in Asbury.
Did your experience in the music industry help you with starting your own business?
I think it helped. It was difficult with such a new kind of business idea. There were a lot of issues with the township and the health department. They didn’t know how to classify us. If you wanted to open a shoe store or a coffee shop, the precedent for the licenses and the things you needed were already set. That didn’t exist with us, so it involved going to multiple zoning board meetings and trying to kind of set the groundwork for what this would be, and like most things at the time it felt like it was taking forever. It was such an arduous process. As soon as it was over and we were open, it was fine. Anything worth doing… you’ve got to put in the work for it.
I attribute my time in the music industry and having that background as being a huge factor in our early success. Not because I used any connections, but all through my teens and twenties I toured and worked for DIY punk, metal, hardcore, whatever types of bands. Touring in those bands meant booking tours ourselves and having that kind of DIY mentality, and, also, I grew up touring and working on Warped Tour. All of those bands of my era made all of their money and survived on t-shirts and stickers and cool branding
I took all of that cool branding and merchandising from the music world into the animal rescue world. There are like 20 shelters in New Jersey that are way bigger in funding and in the amount of animals they save than Catsbury Park, but everybody knows Catsbury because we have cool branding and a logo and something that’s recognizable. Our shirts are printed in high quality with cool designs. I really think that sort of stuff helped us in the beginning for sure, and continues to help us.
Photo courtesy of DJ Bornschein.
How did the Catsbury Park Convention come about?
That also comes from my time in the music industry! I had left touring to do Catsbury Park. The first year, it was going well and I had heard about a giant cat convention in Pasadena. It’s called CatCon and it’s like the Comic Con of animal things. I heard about it and thought, “Why couldn’t there be something like that on the East Coast?” Like anything else in life, if you think of something cool that you want to see happen, don’t wait for somebody else to do it – do it yourself.
So, I reached out to a buddy of mine, Jake Snufnarowski, who runs a production company in Manhattan called Rocks Off Concerts. They do a lot of successful promotions. I said, “Hey, I want to do this thing, do you want to help me?” I kind of thought about it like this, “I opened up this Cat Cafe, this cat rescue, it’s successful, and we’re saving cats. I had never owned my own business and I did that.”
One thing I have a ton of experience with is event production. I’ve worked shows my whole life and that is more in my wheelhouse than anything else I’ve done, so I just kind of blended the two. I sent an email to their event coordinator to see if this would this even be possible and what would it cost. I didn’t have any frame of reference. A week later I took a visit to the site and within 10 days we had signed the contract to do it.
What can people expect when they visit Catsbury Café?
It’s a super fun, cool experience to just hang out in a room and drink coffee and there’s cats running around. They’re all friendly, they jump on your lap. All of the cats in Catsbury Cafe are up for adoption.
Tell us a bit about what goes on at the convention.
We try and program the day so that people who are going to travel – even people who aren’t, but particularly people who travel – so there’s something to do all day. We’re going to have a pop-up cat cafe, so there’s going to be a room with cats running around. You can go and get a coffee with all the cats running around. All are adoptable. We hope to do a ton of adoptions on site. That’s a fun thing to do. A lot of families come.
We will have Over the Moon Art Studios from Asbury Park. The woman who runs that, we’re going to set up a breakout room for her where she’s going to be doing cat-themed arts and crafts for kids. There will be speakers throughout the day; some will be educational, like how to raise a young kitten, things to look out for in your cat, and the importance of wellness visits, while others will be more on the entertaining side.
The guy who was one of the original founders of Cat Town in Oakland, who was the inspiration for Catsbury Park, he’s become a good friend of mine and he does this thing called Catman Bingo. People love it. We’ll be giving away a lot of prizes for that. We have a vendor village of 50 to 60 vendors with cool cat t-shirts, cat toys, cat themed art, anything you could put a cat on will be sold there
Something unique to the Catsbury Convention – and this ties into the rock-and-roll background – is we have a tattoo shop that we’re friendly with coming, and they will do cat tattoos all day. The majority of the cat tattoos onsite are smaller ones; they take 30 to 40 minutes. At the end of the convention, we’re going to have a cat tattoo contest.
Anybody who has a tattoo of a cat or cat-themed tattoo gets to enter this contest. We’ll give away cool prizes, like getting a real, full-size cat tattoo at the tattoo shop. I don’t think we’re any better than other cat rescue places, but I want to make it fun, I want to make it entertaining and more of an experience to be involved in this cat rescue world. We want to make it cool to be a cat person.
Has anyone from the music scene become a fan?
Brian Fallon, the singer of Gaslight Anthem, has adopted two cats from us. He and his wife are big supporters of Catsbury Park. A couple of years ago he wore a Catsbury hat onstage every night on a tour and all the sudden our mail order was through the roof for this one particular hat. I was sending them to Germany, I was sending them to South America. We were sending them all over the Unites States.
There’s a misconception that when families want a pet, a dog is ideal because a cat will just sit around and be anti-social. What would you say to bring knowledge to correct that stereotype?
I would start by saying that this person never had a cat. I love dogs, I love all animals, and for me, it doesn’t need to be an ‘either or’ thing. I think cats are misunderstood, for sure. I love dogs so much, but I think that they can be very easy companions. Cats… you need to earn it. Anything worth its weight in this world you have to earn. When you earn the love of a cat, it’s something super special, because they only will love and show affection to the right person.
FOR MORE ON CATSBURY PARK, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE! FOR TICKETS & INFO ON CATSBURY CONVENTION, CLICK HERE!
