Rachael Dickzen

Sarah Konsmo from WUSA9 Wake Up Washington interviewing a representative of a cat charity with which Patriot Pawsabilities works.

So late Saturday, Mo, the owner of Patriot Pawsabilities, my favorite cat cafe out in Fairfax, posted asking for volunteers to come in at 7 am today to play with the cats while WUSA9 was there filming for Wake Up Washington. Of course, I volunteered instantly, even though I normally avoid waking up before 9 am if I can help it.

I suffer for my art, can’t you tell? (My life is so hard)

It was a lot of fun! A lot of volunteers came out and we got free cat playing time while the Wake Up Washington team did several live spots on the show with Mo and a representative from one of the charity. My former journalist days were all print or online related and I really only worked with video for one summer before senior year of college. I really enjoyed getting to see them at work! I’ll post a link to the content if I can find it; I was just in the background, but it still would be pretty cool to see myself on TV, if only for a second. :)

I got to interact with the host Sarah Konsmo a little when I sent her photos of a cat investigating her purse. She said something about tweeting it out, I’ll have to see if that happens or not.

I’m super glad Patriot Pawsabilities is getting some press! This is my fourth time there and it’s such a great place to visit and such a labor of love. Each time I go, they’ve added something else to make the cafe run more smoothly or more professionally. They now have liability releases everyone has to sign before they go in, which as a lawyer, I super appreciate!

I actually wrote a story earlier this year set in a cat cafe; I used Patriot Pawsabilities as setting inspiration, because it’s just such a well laid out place (although the name of my cat cafe in the story was Cleocatra’s Palace). That story hasn’t seen the light of day yet because it wasn’t accepted for the initial volume I submitted it to, but it’s still being considered for other volumes of that same publication. So - fingers crossed!