After Aix and Colmar, the Mon Chat Pitre bookstore network wants to make Toulouse “purr”

After Aix-en-Provence and Colmar, the Mon Chat Pitre brand will open its third address in France in early May in Toulouse. This new establishment, which succeeds a children’s bookstore in the Place de la Bourse district, will be managed by a mother-daughter duo and will welcome several adopted cats on its shelves, ready to lead a new life among books. This is the concept of “purr-bookstore”, launched in 2021 by former journalist Solène Chavanne, and which combines reading and animal protection.

“For several years I had a column on LCI during which I adopted cats and dogs but the idea came to me one morning, seeing my cat Mustache, lying on a book. I knew cat bars existed, but bookstores didn’t. However, the two go very well together. I wanted to combine the serenity brought by a moment of reading with the calming provided by the chat.”

Marcel, the brand’s mascot

Without experience or market research, Solène Chavanne and her companion at the time who remained her partner, Jean-Philippe Doux, journalist at RMC, left Paris in June 2020 to settle in Aix-en-Provence. The first Mon Chat Pitre bookstore was born a year later with Marcel in the leading role of the bookseller cat. Found in a trash can, this orphaned feline whose unusual passion is to talk to chandeliers has become the brand’s mascot. Four years after its creation, the Mon Chat Pitre brand, which is developing into brand licensing, boasts 60 million views on social networks, some 100,000 subscribers and an international clientele.

For the Toulouse bookstore, the feline team is partly formed. It will bring together two cats found in a street in Ibiza, two others from local associations and a cat from Greece. “He too was picked up in a trash can by a lady who immediately called me to collect him. He seems to have all the required qualities. He’s funny and a stickler,” explains Solène Chavanne.

A model that allows independent bookstores to exist

Laid out as a “cat paradise”, each location includes a room dedicated to the different needs of the eight to nine felines welcomed there. But it is on the shelves, in contact with books and customers, that they spend most of their time.

“Cats create impressive bonds. In the bookstore, people sit and pet them, talk to each other and laugh together. They come to meet the cats they have seen on the networks but they also buy books. Our model works. Faced with competition from online sales and large brands, it allows independent booksellers to exist,” says Solène Chavanne.

After Toulouse, the brand plans to open three new bookstores in June, in Bordeaux, Versailles and Albi. The ambition of Mon Chat Pitre is to “make all the cities of France purr” and why not abroad too. Its creator has already received requests from Argentina and Canada.

“We will remain very selective in the choice of candidates. We are talking about animal welfare. We don’t use cats to do a business but to give them a second life after the street or the shelter. This requires being very present. You should know that France is breaking records with 100,000 to 300,000 abandonments per year depending on the associations, mostly cats,” underlines the founder of Mon Chat Pitre who already has in mind creating a foundation to welcome future “bookstore retirees”.