Now enjoy Happy Hour with your cat

Alcohol-free wines make the pet loopy and the owner happy

Why drink alone when you can drink with your pet?

The question comes from two competing start-ups in the unlikely product category of faux wine for cats (and, to a lesser extent, dogs) that comes in miniature bottles with cutesy names. No alcohol is involved (think liquid catnip). But already the company that brought its products to market first, Apollo Peak — which calls itself “the original cat winery” — is accusing its newer competitor, Pet Winery, of being a copycat.

Both ran discount promotions for Valentine’s Day. Both have come up with clever names for their products: For $11.95, people can buy Fluffy an 8-ounce bottle of Catbernet or Pinot Meow from Apollo Peak, which is based in Denver.

Or for $14.95, they can pour 12 ounces of Meow & Chandon from Pet Winery of Fort Myers, Florida.

Since alcohol can harm cats, these products are essentially catnip water, which can make a cat loopy and an owner happy.

But based on a wine tasting I conducted at a local cat cafe-slash-adoption centre, the products are primarily catnip for the owners: The shelter cats did not like wines from either company — only two of them indulged — but the people visiting the tastings loved the concept.

“That’s the greatest thing ever,” said Savannah Thrasher, 23, a medical biller who was at the Cat Town Café here. “It would be good if my cat can enjoy wine with me,” she said.

It all started two years ago when Brandon Zavala, the chief executive of Apollo Peak, “spawned the idea of wine for cats out of nowhere”, he said. “A pet is more like a friend, a roommate or a family member,” 

he said. “Why are we just feeding them water?”

Zavala, 32, used to sell pet food products and has been learning more about the business through his start-up. Initially he called his product a “snack beverage”. If he had not changed it to cat wines, he said, “it wouldn’t have gone viral”.

He named his business for his cat, Apollo, and for the mountains of Denver. Organic beets from California provide the colouring. The catnip comes from the higher elevations of Colorado. His small wine bottles are sold online and in 200 stores, including T. J. Maxx and Marshalls. Zavala imbues his products with sayings like “Making Cats Great Again” and #whydrinkalone.

Cat wines are the latest manifestation of a growing trend of pet owners treating them like people.

Over the past 15 years, “the pet market has been transformed by humanisation of pets”, said David Sprinkle, the research director at marketresearch.com. A survey his organisation conducted last year found that 62 per cent of cat owners (and 64 per cent of dog owners) consider their pet to be part of the family.

“The term ‘pet parent’ has increasingly replaced ‘pet owner’,” Sprinkle said. Cat products and supplies make up 30 per cent of the $40-billion United States pet market, excluding services, he said.

© 2017 New York Times News Service