A place where computers, coffee and cats come together

Go ahead and refer to Diane Emery as a “cat lady.” It’s a badge of honor.

Emery, the longtime owner of Executive Reporting Service, a legal services company, also owns the 8,400-square-foot, two-story building with the red brick façade at 4699 Central Ave. It’s here that she’s about to throw open the doors on her next major undertaking: Whiskers Workspace, a coworking center where computers and cats co-mingle (there’s coffee, too).

It’s a collaborative effort with the cat rescue nonprofit CJPaws, Inc. (“Compassion, Justice and Protection for the Animals We Serve”). Every feline on the premises is neutered, healthy, microchipped and available to adopt.

Emery is CJPaws’ board president.

“I think there’s going to be lots of studies about how relaxing cats are,” she said.

The cats-as-work companions model started in Japan. Emery thinks Whiskers Workspace might be the first such place in the United States. Either way, she believes, it’s a sound idea.

“Students need places to study, so they can come here,” Emery said. “A lot of people would love to sit on a couch, work on their laptop and have cats around them.”

Whiskers Workplace – it’s on the second floor (totaling 4,200 square feet) will greet visitors with a soft opening Thursday (Aug. 15).  

The free event will show off all the plush furnished rooms available for hourly, daily (or more) rental. The entire building is wired for high speed WiFi.

Whiskers Oasis. Photo provided.

Whiskers Oasis is the large, open cat and community room; Coworking Commons has a kitchen, printing services and more; the Feline Focus Room is quiet and intimate; Purr Haven provides a fully-equipped workspace with dual monitors, a webcam, a microphone and peripherals including a keyboard and mouse; the two cat-free zones are the Board Room (with a 75 inch Zoom-ready TV and webcam, and a 30-foot conference table), and the private Creative Studio, with Zoom-ready TV, webcam and Yeti mic. There’s a podcast studio as well.

After many years downtown, Emery bought the Central Avenue building, for the ERS administrative headquarters, in 2020.

The arrival of Covid-19 slowed the court reporting business down, but Emery, who had started using video conferencing in the 1980s, found a way around it.

Whiskers Coworking Commons. Photo provided.

“I love technology,” she said, “and I was up to date on Zoom. So when it hit, I called all the judges and said ‘You don’t have to shut things down. I’ll get you set up on Zoom.’

“You couldn’t get a webcam at the time, but I had tons of them. So I got all my clients set up to do Zoom. There was a short drop at the beginning, but then we’d never been busier.”

In fits and starts, renovations continued. The circa-1972 building was gutted down to the concrete floor; electrical and plumbing were replaced.

“The entire second floor was built out for depositions, mediations and arbitrations,” Emery said. “So the rooms are soundproofed, with high-speed internet. It’s all designed for attorneys.”

Once the pandemic eased, most of the world attempted to return to normal.

“I thought at some point people would want to go back to live depositions. But they don’t want to; maybe five to 10 percent did.”

Emery discovered her business could easily adapt. “We’ve been in the cloud, as a business, since 2005,” she said. “So all of our systems are cloud-based …”

Many of her employees moved out of town, or out of state. They still work, remotely, for Executive Reporting Service. Because they can.

Emery had been involved with CJPaws for a few years. The cat rescue group was associated with PetSmart and its Lighthouse Crossings adoption center in western St. Pete, and also with Amanda Jones and her SunShine Kitty Catfe downtown.

At virtually the same time in 2023, PetSmart announced it was closing the Lighthouse Crossings location and Jones’ innovative meet-the-kitties coffeeshop lost it lease.

“It happened very fast, and I didn’t have anywhere to put the cats,” Emery recalled. “There were about 20 of them. So I brought them here. They were sleeping on the board table and sleeping on the chairs.”

Suddenly, Diane Emery knew just what to do with that hardly-used second floor (lawyers rent the first-floor offices).

It’s more than a workspace. “People can come and hang out with the cats, in their natural environment. Where the cats are comfortable. And see what they’re personalities are like, spend time with them.”

She has all sorts of plans, including movie nights, game nights, yoga classes and even kids’ birthday parties.

All with cats.

CJPaws, which has a full-time veterinarian on call, doesn’t do same-day adoptions, Emery stressed. Every cat is important. “I feel like they become part of CJPaws family. So I need to know, can I call you on six months and ask how’s the kitten doing?”

The way Emery sees it, she’s providing a service, for felines and their humans both.

“I would say probably 50 percent of people love cats. And maybe their partner’s allergic; they can’t have a cat at home. Or they travel a lot so they can’t have a cat. So there’s a lot of reasons I think the space is going to be perfect for the cats – and for people.

“The other thing is, I wanted to create a sustainable business model to generate revenue for cat rescue. I ran the numbers, and we should be able to donate about 60 percent of our revenue.”