Cat & Cloud Has Four Rooms Across Westside, Live Oak, Abbott Square and Aptos

Thomas Garner

Oct 7

10 min read

Sunset glow over Seacliff State Beach in Aptos near Santa Cruz on Monterey Bay

Photo: Prg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In about a decade, Cat & Cloud Coffee has grown from a single room into four, spread across a wide stretch of Santa Cruz County. There is a headquarters on Swift Street on the Westside, the original 2016 room on Portola Drive in Live Oak, a plaza room at Abbott Square downtown, and a fourth room in Aptos, clearly labeled as its own community.

That spread is worth walking through carefully, because each location plays its own part in the company's story, and because knowing which locations sit inside the city and which sit outside it matters for anyone trying to find them, whether the day starts downtown, on the Westside or further down the coast.

This piece covers all four locations in roughly the order the company opened them, along with the praise Cat & Cloud has earned in print. Every address and posted hour comes from the company's own locations page, and every piece of praise comes from published coverage of Santa Cruz coffee.

From a Kickstarter Idea to a First Room in 2016

Islands, the travel publication, describes Cat & Cloud as a whimsical local chain that began as a Kickstarter campaign. Choose Santa Cruz, the city's economic development office, adds that the idea started in 2015 and that the first physical room opened in 2016 on Portola Drive in Live Oak.

That first room, at 3600 Portola Drive, is still open today, posting hours of 6:30am to 4pm every day. It carries a Santa Cruz CA 95062 address and sits in Live Oak, the area east of the city where many Santa Cruz mailing addresses fall. The company's own locations page calls it the original.

Opening first in Live Oak rather than on Pacific Avenue downtown planted the company in a neighborhood setting instead of the busiest commercial corridor. The Portola Drive room has now had a full decade to become part of Live Oak's routine, and it was the only Cat & Cloud room for several years before the company grew further.

For a company that now runs four shops, Portola Drive carries a specific weight as the place where everything started, the first proof that a crowdfunded coffee idea could become a daily neighborhood stop.

The Swift Street Headquarters on the Westside

Cat & Cloud's headquarters sits at 719 Swift St Suite 56 on the Westside, posting hours of 6:30am to 3pm daily. The company's locations page notes a kitchen there, and Islands points visitors toward the Swift Street headquarters as the room that serves more food options than any of the others.

Choose Santa Cruz dates the Westside shop's opening to 2020, two weeks before the pandemic struck, and adds that you would not know it today. The same guide singles out its breakfast burrito as worth the wait, which fits the Islands note about Swift Street carrying the widest menu of the four locations.

Opening a cafe two weeks before a pandemic is not a timeline anyone would choose. That the Swift Street shop came through it and is now described by the city's own economic development office as a busy Westside stop says a good deal about how the neighborhood took to it.

The Westside itself holds several other coffee shops, from 11th Hour Coffee on Ingalls Street to Alta Organic Coffee Warehouse on Mission Street Extension and Verve on Fair Avenue, which makes Swift Street one stop in a varied Westside cluster rather than the only coffee on that side of town.

Abbott Square Adds a Downtown Plaza Room

Cat & Cloud's downtown room sits at 725 Front St, inside Abbott Square, and it keeps the longest hours of the four, 8am to 7pm every day. Abbott Square is a plaza setting, closer to a town square than a strip of storefronts, so the room is built around people gathering rather than people walking past.

That plaza setting gives the Abbott Square location its own character. It is a different kind of downtown coffee stop than a storefront on Pacific Avenue a few blocks away, more of a place to sit and stay a while, and its later evening close makes it the Cat & Cloud location most likely to be open after work.

Choose Santa Cruz's staff clearly know it well. The guide mentions a go to Quad Espresso ordered from Abbott Square by one member of the city's housing team, a small detail that shows the downtown room is part of the daily routine for people who work in the city.

With Abbott Square, the company covers three very different settings: a neighborhood room in Live Oak, a food focused headquarters on the Westside, and a gathering place right in the middle of downtown Santa Cruz.

A Fourth Room in Aptos, Clearly Its Own Community

The fourth room sits at 10 Parade St STE A in Aptos, posting hours of 6:30am to 4pm daily, and its address reads Aptos CA 95003. Aptos is a distinct community south of Santa Cruz along the county's coastline, and the room belongs to Aptos, not to Santa Cruz proper.

That distinction deserves to be kept rather than blurred, especially since a visitor unfamiliar with the county might assume every Cat & Cloud room sits in the city. Choose Santa Cruz is precise about it, describing four shops in total with two of them in the City, which leaves Live Oak and Aptos outside the city line.

For anyone mapping out the company's footprint, that means Swift Street and Abbott Square are the two locations inside Santa Cruz itself, Portola Drive is the Live Oak original with a Santa Cruz mailing address, and Parade Street belongs to Aptos. That precision helps a visitor plan a route as much as it helps anyone understand the company's real geography.

Extending into Aptos also shows a company confident enough in its identity to carry it beyond its home area, a little further down the coast, while keeping the same hours pattern and the same early 6:30am open as its Live Oak and Westside shops.

What the Publications Say

Islands opens its Santa Cruz coffee feature with Cat & Cloud and puts it plainly: there may be plenty of coffee shops in Santa Cruz, but there is only one Cat & Cloud. The feature describes pastel shops with bubblegum pink and sky blue aesthetics, a relaxed environment and great service.

The same feature notes that the company's stated priority is hospitality and that this shows the moment you step inside. It also points readers to the company's podcast and YouTube channel, which let people follow the business well beyond the four shops.

Choose Santa Cruz lands on the same theme from a different direction. Its 2025 guide describes a people first mission that is apparent when you walk into any of the four shops, and says you are almost guaranteed to walk out feeling like a million bucks because of the compliments and the coffee.

A national travel publication and the city's own economic development office, writing for different readers, reach the same conclusion about how it feels to walk into a Cat & Cloud room. That kind of agreement across sources is worth more than any single review.

A 2016 Start in a Long Coffee Timeline

Cat & Cloud arrived in a city that already had decades of coffee history. Choose Santa Cruz's 2025 guide lists the city's coffee businesses in the order they opened, and by that count a downtown company on Pacific Avenue had been operating since 1978, Lulu Carpenter's had opened its first downtown room in 1992, and both Verve and Firefly Coffee had started in 2007.

Against that backdrop, a crowdfunded idea from 2015 that became a Portola Drive shop in 2016 was a newcomer. It is a measure of how quickly the company found its footing that within a few years it had added a Westside headquarters, a downtown plaza location and a shop in Aptos.

The guide also shows who came after. It dates 11th Hour Coffee's first farmers market cart to 2017, Shrine Coffee on West Cliff Drive to March 2020, the same spring the Swift Street shop opened, and Mariposa Coffee Bar's permanent Pacific Avenue location to 2023. Cat & Cloud sits in the middle of that newer wave, one of the names that shaped the city's coffee in the last decade.

Reading the timeline this way is useful for a visitor. It explains why Santa Cruz coffee feels layered, with long running downtown names, a nationally known company from 2007, and a newer generation of cafes that includes Cat & Cloud's four.

Planning a Day Around the Four Rooms

The posted hours make the four locations easy to sequence. An early start works anywhere but Abbott Square, since Swift Street, Portola Drive and Aptos all open at 6:30am. A late lunch should happen before 3pm on Swift Street, where the kitchen and the breakfast burrito live, or before 4pm in Live Oak or Aptos.

Abbott Square is the room for the second half of the day. It opens at 8am and runs until 7pm, so a visitor who spends the afternoon downtown or on Pacific Avenue can still find a Cat & Cloud room open well into the evening.

Geography matters as much as the clock. Swift Street and Abbott Square are the two locations inside the city, one on the Westside and one downtown. Portola Drive sits out in Live Oak to the east, and Parade Street sits further along the coast in Aptos, so a visitor based downtown will usually reach Abbott Square first and the Aptos shop last.

Hours come from the company's own locations page and can change with the seasons, so checking the page or a Google listing on the day of a visit is the safest plan, especially for the earlier afternoon closes.

Four Rooms, One Growing Story

Put the four locations together and the growth story is clear. An idea in 2015 funded through Kickstarter. A first shop on Portola Drive in Live Oak in 2016. A Westside headquarters on Swift Street that opened two weeks before the pandemic in 2020. A downtown plaza location at Abbott Square. A fourth shop in Aptos, labeled as its own community.

The hours tell their own story too. Three locations open at 6:30am, Swift Street closes at 3pm, Portola Drive and Aptos close at 4pm, and Abbott Square stays open until 7pm, so the downtown plaza is the evening option and the other three are morning and midday stops. Posted hours can change, so a quick check before visiting is worthwhile.

Ten years after that first Portola Drive room opened, Cat & Cloud anchors four distinct corners of Santa Cruz County's coffee map, each worth knowing on its own terms, whether a first visit happens in Live Oak, on the Westside, at Abbott Square or down in Aptos.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are Cat & Cloud's four locations?

Cat & Cloud runs four locations: the Westside headquarters at 719 Swift St Suite 56, the original 2016 shop at 3600 Portola Drive in Live Oak, a downtown cafe at 725 Front St in Abbott Square, and a fourth shop at 10 Parade St STE A in Aptos. Choose Santa Cruz counts two of the four, Swift Street and Abbott Square, inside the city.

When did Cat & Cloud open its first room?

The first physical room opened in 2016 at 3600 Portola Drive in Live Oak, according to Choose Santa Cruz, which dates the idea to 2015. Islands adds that the company began as a Kickstarter campaign. The Portola Drive room still posts daily hours of 6:30am to 4pm, and the company's own locations page calls it the original.

Is the Aptos location part of Santa Cruz?

No. The room at 10 Parade St STE A carries an Aptos CA 95003 address, and Aptos is its own community south of Santa Cruz. Choose Santa Cruz describes Cat & Cloud as four shops with two in the City, meaning Swift Street and Abbott Square. The Aptos room posts hours of 6:30am to 4pm every day.

What makes the Swift Street headquarters different?

The headquarters at 719 Swift St Suite 56 has a kitchen, and Islands says it serves more food options than any of the other locations. Choose Santa Cruz singles out its breakfast burrito as worth the wait. It opened in 2020, two weeks before the pandemic, and posts daily hours of 6:30am to 3pm, the earliest close of the four.

How is Cat & Cloud described in the press?

Islands says there may be plenty of coffee shops in Santa Cruz but only one Cat & Cloud, and it describes pastel shops with a relaxed environment and great service. Choose Santa Cruz's 2025 guide describes a people first mission you notice in any of the four shops. Both point to hospitality as the company's defining trait.

Which Cat & Cloud room stays open latest?

The Abbott Square location at 725 Front St posts daily hours of 8am to 7pm, the latest close of the four locations. The other three open earlier, at 6:30am, and close in the afternoon: Swift Street at 3pm, and Portola Drive and Aptos at 4pm. That makes the downtown plaza cafe the natural after work stop.

Where is the Abbott Square location?

The Abbott Square room is at 725 Front St in downtown Santa Cruz, inside a plaza setting rather than a storefront strip. It posts daily hours of 8am to 7pm. Choose Santa Cruz mentions a city housing team member's go to Quad Espresso ordered there, a small sign that the room is part of downtown's daily routine.

Which other coffee shops are on the Westside near Swift Street?

The Westside holds several other coffee shops near Cat & Cloud's 719 Swift St headquarters, including 11th Hour Coffee at 402 Ingalls St, Alta Organic Coffee Warehouse at 2712 Mission Street Extension and Verve at 1010 Fair Ave. Each sits on a different Westside street, so the neighborhood works as a cluster of stops rather than a single one.

Is the Portola Drive location inside Santa Cruz city?

The Portola Drive room at 3600 Portola Drive carries a Santa Cruz CA 95062 mailing address, and Choose Santa Cruz places it in Live Oak, the area east of the city. Since the same guide counts only two of the four Cat & Cloud shops inside the City, the fairest description is Live Oak, the company's original 2016 room.

Where can people follow Cat & Cloud beyond the four locations?

Islands points readers to Cat & Cloud's podcast and a YouTube channel connected to the company, which give a look into the business and Santa Cruz coffee well beyond its four locations. For in person visits, the shops sit at 719 Swift St, 3600 Portola Drive, 725 Front St in Abbott Square and 10 Parade St in Aptos.

Work with Hillcane

Cat & Cloud Coffee has grown from a single Live Oak shop in 2016 into four, spanning a Swift Street headquarters, Abbott Square downtown and a clearly labeled location in neighboring Aptos.

If your Santa Cruz coffee business has grown across multiple rooms worth explaining clearly, reach Hillcane at hillcane.co/contact or call (256) 384-2449.