This is part of a series about creative people and their pets.
Caitlin Mociun makes her living adorning things. Her handcrafted, locally produced jewelry is set with kaleidoscopic gemstones, and her Brooklyn boutique is a study in curation, vibrant paintings, artisan ceramics, every object chosen. So you might expect her cat, a Rosette Bengal named Cleo with a boldly patterned coat and eyes like polished jade, to be the most styled creature in the building: a bejeweled collar, a custom climbing wall, a shelf of designer cat goods.
She is the opposite. Mociun, a person who improves objects for a living, has decided that the one perfect object in her life needs no improving at all. And that small refusal turns out to be a surprisingly precise portrait of what cat ownership looks like now, once you strip away the old clichés.
The muse she won’t accessorize
Cleo is, by her owner’s account, flawless. “I think she is the most wonderful cat in the whole world,” Mociun says. “She is so sweet and has the softest fur. She doesn’t break things or scratch furniture, and she snuggles with me every night.” As a kitten Cleo was a natural mascot, catwalking among the cups and vases in the shop window, watching leaves blow down the street. These days she prefers home; bring her to the boutique now and she beelines for the closet and stays there all day.
The obvious move, for a designer, would be to make her muse literal. Mociun has been tempted. “I have always wanted to do a collection based on her and her spots but it hasn’t materialized yet. It’s still brewing in my brain.” She even considered a bejeweled collar, and has draped a gold chain around Cleo’s neck for photos. But she keeps landing on the same conclusion. “She looks so perfect in just her spotty coat that I keep her au naturel. Gold is so heavy, I just don’t think she likes the feeling of wearing anything.”
That is the whole philosophy in miniature. The cat’s comfort outranks the styling opportunity, even for someone whose instinct is to style. It is a kind of restraint that the pet-product world, forever trying to sell us one more thing, rarely rewards.
A cat-friendly home built by subtraction
Mociun’s apartment has been celebrated for its subtle cat-friendliness, but ask her how she designed it and the answer is almost anticlimactic: mostly by paying attention to what Cleo actually wanted and removing what she did not.
“We are just lucky really,” she says. They built Cleo an elaborate cat wall; Cleo declined to climb it, so they took it down. What Cleo loves instead costs nothing. “She prefers to crawl inside things and burrow, so a blanket or our bedding is really what she’s after, or a pile of laundry, clean or dirty.” Her actual favorite spot is a flattened felt pod by the fireplace, and Mociun is clear-eyed that it is the fire, not the bed, that Cleo is there for.
The lesson for the rest of us is freeing. A well-designed cat home is less about acquiring the right gear than about observing your specific cat and arranging around their real preferences, which are often humbler and cheaper than the catalog implies.
”Trash cat,” and the case against designer pet goods
For someone with an exquisite eye, Mociun is refreshingly unmoved by the recent boom in well-designed cat products. Asked for favorite brands, she demurs. “Maybe I need to give the cat product world another look, but I haven’t seen anything out there that I am compelled to buy.” Cleo’s tastes settle the matter anyway. “We do buy her toys, but she loves a box and some crinkly paper. I call her trash cat.” Same with beds: Cleo prefers the human bed, a nice chair, or a small piece of white sheepskin she likes to bite a few times before falling asleep on it.
There was only ever one habit worth correcting. “The only naughty thing we kind of had to train her out of was eating plants,” Mociun says, and even that resolved itself with age, though Cleo still nibbles a leaf “if she is feeling ignored.” Mociun reads it as a signal rather than a misbehavior: “I just know she needs to have a play sesh.”
The ethic underneath the aesthetic
Mociun’s restraint with Cleo is not separate from how she runs her business; it is the same value applied. She has always produced in New York, even back when the Mociun name was a clothing label, out of a conviction that “taking care of one’s own community is important.” She works with gem dealers who focus on sustainability and favors up-cycled and antique stones, to the point that “for each type of stone, we are able to know the impact on the environment and community that mines it.” It is a worldview built on knowing where things come from and not taking more than you need, and it extends naturally to a cat she would rather keep comfortable than ornamented.
It also tracks with a cultural shift she has clearly noticed. The “cat lady” stigma, she says, is fading. “One can love their cat and truly have it as part of the family, much like people have done with dogs for a long time. The stereotype of what cats are like is going away a bit, too. People are starting to see that cats have different and dynamic personalities.” The modern cat owner Mociun describes is not a punchline. She is someone who pays close attention to an individual animal and meets it on its own terms, which is exactly what Mociun does with Cleo.
In the end, all the restraint comes from abundance, not indifference. “She just warms my heart and fills me with so much love,” Mociun says. “I have had other cats before who I loved, but I have never had a cat that I felt this connected to. She’s my little sidekick.” The most beautiful thing the designer owns is the one she had the taste to leave exactly as it is.
