Cat Tales Feline Health Center fills 4,039 square feet in Davis’ Anderson Plaza shopping center, twice as large as most cat-focused veterinary practices. Yet customers, many of whom don’t own cats, show up for a small, cramped room adjacent to the lobby.

Opened on Dec. 16 at 606 W. Covell Blvd., Cat Tales is home to Tabby Tea Cat Lounge & Adoption Center, the Sacramento region’s first cat cafe. It’s a long-awaited place for cat lovers to get their feline fix — and maybe come home with a new pet.

Owners Julie Cole and Chris Shacoski, who also run the attached veterinary clinic, keep up to four adoptable cats at a time in Tabby Tea from the Yolo County Animal Shelter. Hourlong visits to the cat cafe can be reserved online and cost $10, including the customer’s choice of seltzer, tea, yerba mate, kombucha or coffee.

That price is designed to attract UC Davis students, who might miss their cats back home or aren’t able to adopt. Even cat-owning students such as Laura Ellison, a senior studying animal science at UC Davis and a veterinary assistant at a nearby clinic, may visit to play with others.

“I think cats in general are just very therapeutic to be around ... especially for people that don’t have pets,” Ellison said. “I know I was still in my freshman year at UC Davis, some place like this would be definitely a big help, especially with general school stress.”

To keep a calm, rescue-friendly environment, Tabby Tea only allows children when accompanied by an adult. Guests are asked to dangle toys from wands rather than handle cats with their bare hands, and keep from waking any felines sleeping in their circular nooks.

Overstimulated cats can retreat to a visitor-free area through a small door to recharge their social batteries. The rest of the veterinary is designed to soothe cats: phones don’t ring, machines don’t beep and all animals’ eyes in decorative paintings face away from the real-life veterinary patients.

“This whole clinic was designed from the moment it was dreamed up with only cats in mind,” Shacoski said. “In most (animal) hospitals, cats just fit into the dog world. The colors on the walls, the fact that it’s calm and quiet, everything we do, the way our staff is trained, the way we handle the cats is all the latest knowledge base for treating cats the best.”

The world’s first known cat cafe opened in Taiwan in 1998, sparking a craze across Asia and, later, the United States. Cole and her daughter visited their first cat cafe in Salt Lake City and fell in love with idea, adding similar businesses to their itineraries for Florida vacations and driving to Chico Cat Cafe, KitTea Cat Lounge in San Francisco and Cat Town in Oakland closer to home.

Cat cafes, however, have struggled to take off in the Sacramento region. Capital Cat Cafe first teased its opening to huge fanfare in 2021; more than three years later, the aspiring Boulevard Park business has yet to open its doors, bedeviled by one delay after another.

A previous Davis concept called the Pawrlor hosted some pop-ups but called it quits in 2018 before its brick-and-mortar location could open, citing issues with its building and a lack of funding. Lincoln has Champy’s Catfe in FieldHaven Marketplace, where beverage service has been discontinued but customers can bring in outside drinks while playing with adoptable rescues. Bradshaw Animal Shelter in Mather had a small cafe prior to the pandemic, which has also been nixed.

Tabby Tea, thus, has essentially no regional competition. But its greatest business advantage is that the owners don’t need it to make money.

Cat Tales’ veterinary care will generate far more revenue than Tabby Tea’s $10 covers ever could, Shacoski said. The owners are at the tail end of their careers — both came out of retirement to start Cat Tales, in fact — and included Tabby Tea in the business simply because they wanted a cat cafe in Davis.

“We’ve been vets for a long time. We’ve owned practices. We’ve done OK, and we really just want to give back to the community,” Shacoski said. “We’re not worried about making money from the cat cafe. In fact, if we ever generate any income, we’re giving it away.”

Cole and Shacoski were already interested in opening a cat cafe when Shacoski caught wind that a group of Da Vinci Charter Academy high school students had pitched a similar business proposal for a class project based on the TV show “Shark Tank.”

The couple met with the students and incorporated several of their ideas into Tabby Tea, including the logo and serving prepackaged boba tea. They’ve also donated money to help start a Pets And Wellness Sessions (PAWS) program through Meals on Wheels Yolo County, which would deliver pet food to people in need and establish “senior hours” at the cat cafe.

For now, Tabby Tea Cat Lounge & Adoption Center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Visit Cat Tales’ website at cattalesdavis.com to book a slot.

This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

A Sacramento County pilot program to offset housing fees for multi-family and low-income households was approved by the Board of Supervisors earlier this month.

The program, which goes into effect in February, will run for three years to reduce barriers to affordable housing in unincorporated parts of the region, including Arden Arcade and Florin.

“We’re trying to help the affordable housing developers make their project pencil out so they can build it and help provide housing,” County Engineer Claudia Wade said. “Housing in California is so expensive. With affordable housing, because they are deed restricted, they have the guarantee that they will serve a community that has the lower median income.”

An offset fee is a charge an affordable housing lender uses to maintain a savings account associated with a resident’s mortgage. These mortgages are a requirement to maintain ownership over a home. A resident’s offset account takes away the balance in their bank account from their mortgage balance. As a result, this lowers the interest amount, also known as the percent someone is charged on a home loan. Offset fees are used to reduce or waive development costs for housing projects with low income units.

Affordable housing and accessibility remains a prevalent issue for residents of Sacramento County. During the January meeting, the results of a county focus group showed residents expressed a strong need for more affordable housing.

“With housing and accessibility, I hear from so many native Sacramentans that are now priced out of the market,” said supervisor Rosario Rodriguez, who represents District 4. “When you look at home sales, in comparison to four years ago, it has grown exponentially where I can see why people believe they can’t afford a home here.”

In 2024, the California Housing Partnership found more than 50,000 low income renter households in Sacramento County did not have access to affordable housing. Additionally, 83% of extremely low income households said they are paying more than half of their income on housing costs.

These housing projects will be available to residents whose income is a minimum of 30% to a maximum of 80% of the region’s area median income, Wade said. The California Department of Housing and Community Development states that households with an area median income of 50% to 80% is considered lower income, while 30% to 50% is classified as very low income. The area median income in Sacramento County is $88,724, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

This project first launched in April 2024 when county staff proposed to use up to $5 million from the Affordable Housing Incentive General Fund Reserve and up to $5 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and Affordable Housing Ordinance programs. These funds, $10 million in total, were put aside for eligible affordable housing projects, the county stated in a news release.

Later in September, the County’s Community Development Department presented the program, where offset fees will solely go to affordable housing projects. The average cost of these fees is estimated at $4 million annually, the county stated in a news release.

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Emma Hall is an equity reporter for The Sacramento Bee covering Indigenous and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders communities. She’s previously worked for the Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR. She is a graduate of Sacramento State and Diablo Valley College.

California residents were among the scores of Capital One customers dealing with a nationwide banking outage on Friday.

Capital One customers across the country have reported experiencing problems with receiving paycheck deposits or making transactions.

Capital One, one of the United States’ largest financial institutions, was experiencing service disruptions resulting in customers not having full access to their accounts, the Associated Press reported.

In a statement, Capital One said that 90% of the problems reported by customers were related to deposits.

Account balances made up 7% of reported problems, while online login comprised 3%, the company said.

“This bank is not even answering phone calls. I have bills to pay,” one X user wrote on Friday. “I wonder how you will compensate your customers for the problems you are causing them with the pending bills that we need to pay.”

“As a customer waiting on my funds to pay bills, I need an ETA on service being restored to communicate with the companies I have payments due with,” another Capitol One user wrote on X.

According to Capital One, the disruption began on Wednesday and is due to a technical issue with one of its service providers.

The outage has impacted the processing of some deposits, payments and transfers.

Customers began reporting deposit-related issues-related issues on Thursday, according to Down Detector.

Just after 9 a.m. Friday, nearly 4,000 customers reported issues, with 92% complaining about deposits.

As of midday Friday, it was unclear when the issues impacting Capital One would be completely resolved.

FIS Global, a third-party vendor that provides financial tech services for Capital One, told CNN that a power outage was at the root of the problem.

FIS Global was working to fix the issue, the company said in a statement.

“We are working with impacted clients to finalize the posting of transactions that occurred while systems were offline and expect most, if not all, of that work to be completed today,” FIS Global said.

SACRAMENTO — California's capital city will be home to one of the 10 initial franchises in the newly announced Major League Volleyball (MLV) set to launch in January 2026.

USA Volleyball announced the new women's pro volleyball league on Thursday, with current Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé said to be a founding member and owner of the new Sacramento franchise.

Other MLV franchises will be in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, Kansas, Ohio and Washington.

Other notable founding partners of the league include musician Jason Derulo, Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist Kerri Wash Jennings, and entrepreneur Danny White who will own the MLV's founding franchise — the Omaha Supernovas. It was not yet known what the Sacramento franchise would be named.

USA Volleyball says the MLV is backed by more than $100 million in funding.

"The league aspires to be the top women's pro sports league in the U.S., offering elite competition and rivalries, excellent medical and training support, top venues, and major broadcast partnerships," USA Volleyball said in the announcement.

In addition to owning the Kings and this new women's franchise, Ranadivé was instrumental in Major League Baseball's Athletics franchise moving from Oakland to West Sacramento for the next three seasons. The A's will play ball at Sutter Health Park during that time, which is currently also the home of the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats, which Ranadivé also owns.

Richard Ramos

Richard Ramos is a web producer for CBS Sacramento who was born and raised in Sacramento. He graduated with a BA in Journalism from CSUS.

Sacramento State will cut its upcoming budget by $45 million as the state Legislature shrinks the California State University system budget by 8%, President Luke Wood said during his Spring Address Thursday morning.

Wood said this decision comes as the university faces a “inflationary and benefit increase” of more than $10 million, raising Sacramento State’s estimated deficit to $33 million. The biggest component, the president explained, were pay raises for California State University employees in 2024.

Wood said Sacramento State stands by its decision to accept the pay increases because they believe its “important for people to be properly compensated for the work that they do.”

The university’s operating fund budget is around $400 million for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Wood said they opted for a $45 million one-time cut instead of $161 million over a long-term time frame.

Sacramento State will be “working closely” with its campus leadership to communicate with chairs and deans on this budget gap. Wood said the university will review how to generate revenue to restore “areas that (the university) believe are beleaguered,” Wood said.

“It’s something that we’re going to have to do together as a community, and we have some strategies and suggestions,” Wood said.

Moving forward, Wood said the university will “need to slow down in some areas.” University policies will be up for revision by his staff and the faculty senate, he added.

“In reality, with fewer people and fewer resources, we’re gonna have to do less in order to be able to meet the needs of our budget,” Wood said.

At the same time, Wood said Sacramento State will be “speeding up” in continuing to increase enrollment trends.

“If we don’t, we’ll have a disastrous impact on our community as it is right now. So the leadership team, including the cabinet, myself, intend to identify reduction strategies to address across both years,” Wood said.

In 2024, Sacramento State announced it is increasing mandatory student fees. During these fees’ proposal, Wood wrote in a now deleted Instagram comment that the university would raise these fees to avoid potential layoffs and shutting down programs.

“Campuses in CSU are laying off lecturers, closing down academic programs, merging colleges, reducing student workers, etc. because of the state budget reductions,” Wood wrote. “This isn’t a greedy administration looking for more, this is giving students a choice on what they want their future to be. The state had no resources and had to cut us.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 11:59 AM.

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Emma Hall is an equity reporter for The Sacramento Bee covering Indigenous and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders communities. She’s previously worked for the Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR. She is a graduate of Sacramento State and Diablo Valley College.