He makes sure the beds are cat-approved đ»
For many people, retirement means sitting back and relaxing after many years of building a career.
But for 79-year-old Jaeshin Ha, who retired with his wife in 2019 after running a menâs clothing shop for four decades, business is actually booming.
Christina Ha
Jaeshin has been making beds for rescue cats for the last three years, and his dedication to his craft went viral on TikTok after his daughter Christina Ha posted a video showing a day in her dadâs life.
â[My parents] were still in the process of figuring out what that retirement looked like when the pandemic started,â Christina Ha told The Dodo. She and her parents first began sewing masks in 2020 after Christina and her husband decided to move back in with her parents.
âIt was a very interesting and stressful time, and we kept making masks for a few months,â Christina said. âAfterward, we found ourselves with a lot of fabric, so we started thinking about what we could do with it.â
Christina is a cofounder of Meow Parlor, New York Cityâs first cat cafĂ©, as well as the president of Meow Parlorâs affiliated nonprofit, Meow Parlour Cats, Inc. So, naturally, cat beds came to mind â eventually.
âI don’t remember how we ended up on cat beds, especially since my cats never used the beds we got them, but we thought maybe our cats wanted something different,â Ha said. âOver the summer, we started making prototypes, and I think by October, our cats had finished testing them out and it was clear there was a winner.â
According to Christina, her mom and dad are both âvery detail-orientedâ and Jaeshin has very strong feelings about the quality of his work, so the family went through about four prototypes while developing the design for the perfect cat bed.
âMy dad is very quiet, but he’s also very observant, so he noticed little things like whenever he would lay out a piece of fabric, a cat would come and sit in the middle of it,â Christina said. âSo from the beginning, he wanted [the bed] to be flat. Everything else was about making the bed more appealing to the cats.â
Christina Ha
To test the beds, the family turned the prototypes over to cat fosters and adopters. âWe also would wash the beds to see how they held up and would put them in various parts of the house to see if they would choose the bed,â Christina said. âWe were fortunate that the original concept made sense and it was just a matter of improving the quality and making sure it was more durable to withstand multiple washes.â
Jaeshin and his wife make cat toys, too. They first started by sewing toys shaped like starfish, ladybugs, turtles and even kimbap (a Korean rice roll). âFrom the beginning, they had made a lot of ocean-themed shapes, like the seahorse and shark, because my dad had this theory that cats love fish,â Ha said. âI really doubt that cats have ever interacted with seahorses or clown fish, but I’m not here to correct my dad when he’s having fun.â
When theyâre in stock, the familyâs handmade beds are sold through Meow Parlourâs website, at the brick-and-mortar cafĂ© and through WhisksToWhiskers.com. For every bed sold, a portion goes to Meow Parlourâs nonprofit, and another portion goes to Christinaâs parents for their hard work.
âThe cat beds give my parents a sense of purpose in this part of their life,â Christina said.
But, most importantly, Jaeshin and his wife are making life a little more comfortable for rescue cats all over the world.
To see more of Jaeshin, Youngsook, Christina and the foster cats you help with the purchase of a cat bed, head to @whiskstowhiskers and @meowparlour on both TikTok and Instagram.
