Cat store is no more: Feline-themed vintage shop in Winooski to close this weekend

WINOOSKI ― It’s obvious from the moment you step into Catland Vintage that the shop proprietor is an inveterate collector. The dozens of bright cat-figurine eyes staring back at you from the store’s display case are the first big clue.

“I’m from a family of collectors, people who like old, antique stuff,” Jaye McAskill said Thursday at the Winooski business. She fell into that way of life, too, but felt she needed to narrow her collecting scope. She focused on cats and built her collection into something so large she needed a retail space to pare it down.

A joke of sorts, she said, turned into a reality. She and her husband, Joe McAskill, opened Catland Vintage two years ago, populating the shelves with feline ephemera and other kitschy collectibles.

Catland Vintage closes after business Sunday, Oct. 22. The lease is up, and McAskill said the shop that’s a “money-making hobby” wouldn’t thrive with a likely increase in rent. Plus, she’s moving back to her native British Columbia in large part to tend to her elderly parents.

She’s closing the store sooner than she’d like, but sometimes life intervenes.

“It definitely was outperforming itself,” McAskill said of sales at the shop on a Winooski side street. “The cat theme – people can’t resist it.”

‘Kitties Are So Nice’

McAskill has been buying all things cat since her late 20s. (She’s 51 now.) Obsessive collecting is a family thing; McAskill said her mother’s first cousin, a collector of dolls who lives in Georgia, appeared on an episode of the TV show “Hoarders.”

McAskill began selling cat paraphernalia on eBay more than 20 years ago, but after moving to Vermont in 2020 opened a brick-and-mortar space. The shop is filled with all sorts of objects depicting cats, from those unblinking display-case figurines to a giant panther mascot head to cat-themed drink coasters to cookie jars, T-shirts and lamps.

Not everything in Catland Vintage is cat-related. Other vintage objects range from items decorated with images of unicorns, horses and B-movies to a Morrissey record player.

McAskill said her favorite cat-décor objects lean toward “the weirder the better, things that are made by hand that have that human touch.” She said she has already taken the best of those items out of the shop to keep for herself.

McAskill is also drawn toward traditional collectibles.

“I’m just a sucker for your standard cat figurine,” she said, especially musical cats. That fits McAskill’s lifestyle; she and her husband used to have a band, Pony Death Ride, that recorded feline-themed tunes for a 2016 album, “Cat Sounds.” Song titles range from the merry-sounding (“Stop and Pet a Cat,” “Kitties Are So Nice”) to the less-welcoming (“Your Cats Are Crap,” with lines like “What’s up with the attitude/They’re stinky and they’re rude”).

Cats a grandmother could love

McAskill is trying to fend off her family’s hoarding heritage by selling much of her collection.

“You just can’t keep it all,” she said. “Everyone’s been a collector (in her family). Time and time again it’s been demonstrated to me that you can’t take it with you.”

Still, McAskill will miss being surrounded by her store’s cat tchotchkes and the customers they’ve drawn. She said she’s never had an angry customer.

“It’s sad, surreal, hard to say goodbye to everyone,” McAskill said of her store’s shoppers, who include a more-or-less even mix of locals, college students and out-of-town visitors. She said many of those customers remark that some object or other in the shop reminds them of their grandmothers.

“All of this stuff here probably belonged to someone’s grandma at some point,” McAskill said.

She likes that many of her customers are artists. Catland Vintage is as much artistic expression for McAskill as it is a business.

“It’s definitely a hybrid of creativity and commerce,” she said. She appreciated that her store allowed her to “prove to the world that a cat-themed vintage store is a thing they want and need in their lives.”

Now, McAskill will head off to Canada with her two real-life cats, who have no idea how cat-centric her life outside of her home has been the past two years. Catland Vintage pays sweet tribute to their species.

“If they only knew,” she said.

If you go

WHAT: Catland Vintage

WHEN:: Noon-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 22

WHERE: 7 W. Canal St., Winooski

INFORMATION: (619) 846-3801, www.catlandvintage.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Catland Vintage in Winooski to close feline-themed shop this weekend