The first thing you notice when you walk into Whisker Wonderland in Bellevue is that it feels more like stepping into a Lisa Frank-meets-Miyazaki daydream than a cat adoption center. There are murals of mushroom forests and a velvet couch. A cat named Tortilla zooms through a long, cylindrical play tunnel. She somersaults out the other side and keeps going, a blur of fur and uncontainable joy. And somewhere behind all that whimsy is Anna Montano; barefoot, holding a kitten, running on too little sleep and a heroic amount of heart.
After confronting Pittsburgh’s feral cat crisis in her backyard, Montano created Whisker Wonderland, a rescue disguised as a dreamscape, and a refuge for the wounded, four-legged or not.
Montano never meant to start a rescue. But in 2021, when she and her husband bought a house in Pittsburgh’s North Side, it came with feral cats — lots of them.
“They just started showing up in the backyard,” Montano tells Pittsburgh City Paper during a visit. “And naturally, I started feeding them.”
The cats were multiplying fast. She bought humane traps and took them to get fixed, an endeavor that cost her $15,000 out of pocket while still working a corporate job.
Trapping, in this context, involves using baited cages to safely capture feral cats. From there, they are spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and, when possible, socialized or adopted.
That year, Montano rescued over two dozen cats. Some had kittens before she could intervene.
“There were a few mama cats that trusted me enough to bring their babies to me,” she recalls. “That was it for me. I was in.”
Montano joined Facebook groups like the Feral Cat Movement, spoke with seasoned trappers, and dove into TNR (trap-neuter-return). The more she learned, the more broken the system looked.
Before opening Whisker Wonderland, Montano worked in corporate design — “the shiny side of burnout culture,” as she puts it.
“I got into design to make a living as an artist, but that world wasn’t fulfilling. I wanted something real,” she says.
“It was just a job. This,” she says, motioning towards a black cat curled in a tiny hammock, “this is my purpose.”
She adds, “The feeling of working with a cat that has zero trust, one that legit wants to claw your face off, and watching them slowly learn to love: that is powerful.”
The lounge, which opened in January 2025, isn’t a traditional storefront — it’s a home. A turn-of-the-century white house that feels like a fever dream stitched together by a color-loving maximalist who thinks cats — and people — deserve enchantment.
“I didn’t want a sterile rescue space,” Montano says. “I wanted a dream. Something childlike. Healing.”
Cats are everywhere. Sleeping on bookshelves. Inside flower-shaped beds. Draped across windowsills. A black-and-white kitten named Sweet Pea tugs at Montano’s ankles while a squat, greyish-brown tabby perches on the front desk.
“That’s Lyle,” Montano says. “He’s the office manager. He watches everything.”
Lyle came from Lytle Street on the North Side, part of a massive trapping effort. “The mailman tipped us off,” she says. “Kittens were darting out from under porches.”
Murals by Max “Gems” Gonzales and Shane Pilster wrap the walls with whimsical forests, rainbow skies, sunbeams, clouds, mushrooms, and tiny hidden squirrels. Beds, scratching posts, tunnels, and hidey holes fill every corner.
“I used my love for color and nature, along with what cats need and enjoy, to create this space,” she says. “We all need an escape. If I can offer that, I’m helping people and cats. It’s a win-win.”
Charms, a three-month-old torbie (a mix of tortoiseshell and tabby) with a neurological disorder, wobbles toward a pile of plush cushions. Tiny and determined, her back legs don’t work quite right, but she moves with the energy of a wind-up toy. She’s the lounge’s unofficial mascot. “She reminds everyone that different is okay,” Montano says. She’s also the only one in a cage: open from the top, more like a soft-sided play area, giving her room to move without risk.
Cat lounges may have originated in Asia in the late ’90s, but Montano had a different vision. Whisker Wonderland is a hybrid between a rescue, an art gallery, and a sanctuary. Visitors pay a small fee to lounge with adoptable cats.
Traditional shelters, Montano explains, often rely on cages or temporary fosters, which can mute a cat’s true nature. “When a cat is scared, that’s all people see,” Montano says. “They don’t see how loving they can be once they feel safe. When they hide from visitors, people assume they’re antisocial. But they’re just scared.”
Montano believes cat lounges provide a model that allows rescues to roam freely, interact with different people, play and explore, and be with other cats.
She fostered cats in her home for four years before opening the lounge. “Some of them plateaued with me,” she says. “I couldn’t do anything else to nudge them to the next level. But once they came here, in this space, they truly started to blossom.”
The magic isn’t just in the decor — it’s in the healing. A shy tabby curling up in a visitor’s lap. A stressed-out college student leaves calmer than when they walked in. A cat trusts again.
“You can’t rush trust,” she says. “But you can create the right conditions for it.”
Montano doesn’t expect every visitor to adopt — some come for a cat fix, others cry into a kitten for 20 minutes and leave feeling okay. “People who can’t have pets, who already have cats, or who just need comfort — this place is for them.”
Montano is adamant that she doesn’t just rescue cats — they rescue her right back.
“I think humans have strayed so damn far from what our original intended purpose was supposed to be,” she says. “We work jobs we hate, buy stuff we don’t need. We just give up on our dreams and our purpose. My rescue kitties help center me: they get me to slow down and experience joy. They show me that I already have everything I need.”
Still, there’s an edge to the magic. “Rescue is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” Montano says. “But it also feels like the most natural.” Her days are long and filled with litter boxes, vet visits, and heartbreak. “Every day I see how broken the system is for cats,” she says. Some days, she feels voiceless. “But then I look at these animals and what they’ve survived, and I get centered again.” Even her rare moments of rest, she says, are usually spent “lying on the floor with a cat.”
One rescue that sticks with Montano is the 2023 Troy Hill project. After hearing from Conquer the Colony, another local rescue, about a block overrun with cats, she teamed up with Regina, an independent rescuer she’d never met. Together, they pulled over 30 cats from a single street. “We thought it would be TNR, but every cat was friendly and sick.” There were severe infections, broken bones, and eyes that had to be removed. Most of the vet care came out of their own pockets.
That experience — and meeting Regina, now her best friend — was the final push. “We needed more space. We needed more hope.”
Whisker Wonderland strives to be inclusive. Montano, who spent a decade working with children with autism, designed the space to be sensory-friendly and accessible. Early openings are available for those who need privacy, and she implements a no-judgment policy. “My cats don’t care about gender, race, bank accounts, or who you love. And neither do I.”
That mindset also shapes how she works with animals. “It takes real imagination to see through someone else’s eyes,” she says. “Animals get that. They know how to meet you where you are.”
The lounge also raises awareness about Pittsburgh’s feral cat crisis. Montano says visitors leave stunned by the reality: cats abandoned when people move, litters born under porches, kittens dying in storm drains. A single female can have up to five litters a year, and the numbers spiral fast.
“There’s no city funding for people like me,” Montano says. “The big shelters don’t trap. And after COVID, the low-cost walk-in clinics disappeared.” When the city’s free spay/neuter voucher program stalled for nearly nine months, the situation worsened. “It’s like trying to drain the ocean one bucket at a time.”
Her dream is to grow: more space, more rooms for cats who don’t do well with others, fewer fosters in her bedroom. She wants more education, more collaboration among small rescues, and fewer exhausted rescuers working alone. But most of all, she “wants people to understand this isn’t a cat problem. It’s a people problem. And we need structural change to fix it.”
Back at the counter, Lyle, the office manager, still hasn’t blinked. Sweet Pea is now curled up on Montano’s shoulder. Charms, having burned through all that energy, is tucked into her cushions and snoring like a deflating balloon.
And Montano? She gets back to work. The magic, after all, doesn’t build itself.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.
