Cat lovers are in every corner of the world, but no one does it quite like Richmond. The River City takes it one step further, especially since most Richmonders know the queen of town: Francine, the 7-ish-year-old tri-colored cat who lives at Lowe’s.
Locals noticed the feline chilling around the outdoor furniture display and sleeping atop boxes at the midtown Lowe’s on Broad Street. She soon became a local celebrity—and inspiration for local artists like Ryan Myers, who uses a napping Francine as his illustration muse. Then came VCUarts students who started the Instagram @Business.Cats.RVA, a guide to the city’s shop cats, because Lowe’s isn’t the only one with a mascot. Ko-Fi.com/BusinessCatsRVA
- Pilkington is the true owner of Laurel Gallery in Glen Allen. He takes his job seriously and interacts with every customer—he even has an oil portrait for sale, painted by one of the gallery’s artists.
- Edgar and Tib patrol the Poe Museum gardens and shop. Their dedicated Instagram account @PoeMuseumCat has thousands of followers.
- Meet Page and Mylar at Carytown’s Shelf Life Books, because nothing says heaven quite like books and sleepy cats.
- All the adoptable cats at the new Purrfect Bean Café in the Fan make drinking the “Francine”-named latte all the more enjoyable.
Other purr-fectly adorable stars include:
- Garnett’s Cafe’s Toby
- Cricket at Sneed’s Nursery
- Advance Auto Parts’ Turbo
- Sue at Nicola Flora
- Linden Row Inn’s Annabelle
- Buzzball at the bar, restaurant, and music venue Fuzzy Cactus
- Clark at Strange’s Florist
- Mouse at Azalea Aquariums, and hopefully many more to come and pet.
This article originally appeared in the December 2025 issue.
