Emma Spadafore left corporate after six years to open the kind of store that probably sounds like a joke at a bachelorette dinner. Bookstore. With cats.
Real cats. Available for adoption. Purrfiction opened last summer at 1948 Division Street in Eastern Market, and the joke is that it works.
Spadafore curates secondhand fiction, handmade goods from Michigan artisans, and pre-packaged snacks. There's a coffee setup, gluten-free and vegan options, and a corner of the store partitioned for the cats. Every Saturday, Colony Cat Club brings adoptables in for a few hours.
The retractable partition was deliberate. Cats stress quickly in retail environments, and Spadafore raised a chunk of her startup capital on GoFundMe specifically to install enclosures and barriers that keep the cat-adoption space separated from the main browsing floor. Foster cats, prospective adopters, and the customer who walked in for a paperback can all coexist without bothering each other.
Most of the time. The store's secondhand lean keeps prices low. The made-in-Michigan inventory rotates: candles, bookmarks, the occasional catnip kicker.
The whole place was built on the premise that a small store doesn't have to be one thing. Spadafore is also booking the calendar with monthly book clubs, poetry readings, crafting nights, rescue focus groups, and small-group fitness, which is the kind of thing the GoFundMe page promised before the doors opened. She's been delivering on it.
A portion of every sale goes back to the rescues Purrfiction works with, which on a typical week means Colony Cat Club. Burnout in the cat rescue world is real, and Spadafore framed Purrfiction at the start as one way to take some of that pressure off the volunteer-driven groups doing the work. The animals stay at the rescue's regular fosters during the week.
They visit the bookstore on Saturday. People meet them, sometimes adopt them, and either way buy a book. Purrfiction, 1948 Division Street, Suite 106, Detroit.
