Proceeds from her Edmonds cafe go to help endangered cat

By Janice Podsada

Herald Writer

EDMONDS — Kerry Kelley, owner of the Cheetah Espresso Cafe, claims she’d never worked in food service before opening her business.

But that’s not quite the truth.

She once worked for a "cheetah cafe," which served rabbit, raw chicken, liver no onions. And everything on the menu was strictly takeout.

Its 27 customers were — you guessed it — cheetahs. The cafe was the kitchen at the Wildlife Safari in Roseburg, Ore. There was no dining in.

Kelley, the Safari’s cheetah keeper from 1981 to 1988, prepared their meals. Now Kelley prepares meals for two-legged customers. Needless to say, it’s required some adjustment on the part of the former wildlife trainer and Honolulu zookeeper.

Occasionally when Kelley chops vegetables, she has to remind herself that she’s fixing salads for people, not Congo the gorilla or Lil the chimpanzee.

"They weren’t very picky," she said. "You can get away with bigger chunks."

The new Cheetah Cafe in Edmonds not only serves espresso, pastry and sandwiches, it also serves Kelley’s passion — helping the wild cheetah. Kelley donates 5 percent of the cafe’s profits to the Cheetah Conservation Fund, whose home base is in Namibia, Africa.

The conservation fund has six chapters in North America; one of them is run by Suzanne Garrison of Camano Island.

The fund not only helps the cheetahs, but the African farmers and ranchers.

Kelley, who spent seven years traveling with Damara, a feisty, tamed cheetah, never lost her love for the sleek sprinters, the fastest land animal in the world. A cheetah can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in a few seconds, and then maintain the speed for nearly half a minute.

Damara and Kelley took their wildlife conservation message to kids and schools throughout the West.

"We didn’t train the animals to do tricks, but to be able to be handled and walk on a leash. It was always exciting when we had to stop at an I-5 rest stop."

Cheetahs were the palace cats to the Egyptian pharaohs; they were the royal cats to India’s rajas. But today there are only about 12,000 cheetahs left in the wild, and their population is fast declining because of hunters and a loss of habitat.

Kelley, the first woman zookeeper at the Honolulu Zoo in 1971, has raised money for the cheetah fund for more than a decade.

Last summer, she visited Namibia, and for the first time in her life saw cheetahs in the wild.

When she returned home, Kelley, 53, began having a recurring dream about a cafe called the Cheetah Espresso. At first, she ignored the dream but it became so persistent, so vivid, "that I even saw the cafe logo," she said.

"I’d been in denial about it," she laughed.

And Kelley was trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life when she and her husband, Dean, moved to Edmonds a year ago.

Now when customers walk through the door, they can share in Kelley’s vision. Paintings of cheetahs adorn the walls. But the real conversation starter is the 11-by-14-inch glossy photo that hangs above the counter, a portrait of a raven-haired woman and a taffy-colored cheetah.

"Is that you in the picture?" customers ask.

"That’s the opener," she said.

If customers linger long enough, not only do they learn that Kelley trained members of the cat family, but she also taught pilot whales, Hawaiian spinning dolphins and bottle-nose dolphins how to jump through hoops.

In 1968, two years after she graduated from high school, she got a job caring for marine mammals at Sea Life Park in Oahu, Hawaii. Her observant nature and respectful approach to the animals won her a spot as a trainer.

"We were the only oceanarium at the time with women trainers," she said.

In 1981, Kelley moved to southern Oregon, where she joined the Wildlife Safari. Besides caring for the cheetahs, she raised a lion cub and a tiger cub from birth until they lost their milk teeth at 18 months.

"I had them 24 hours a day," said Kelley, who bottle-fed and weaned the two cubs.

To this day, Kelley’s twin boys recall the kitchen being off-limits when they were 8 years old. That was the year mom raised a tiger. Before the boys came home from school, Kelley made sure the tiger cub was tied to the kitchen table.

"She would try to tackle them," Kelley said of the tiger.

There aren’t any tigers under the tables at the 300-square-foot Cheetah Cafe, and the service is a lot different than at the old "cheetah cafe." Lunch doesn’t arrive in a bucket and isn’t tossed in the air.

"We would have buckets of meat. We would heave chunks over the fence, and we’d hear them go plop. Then we’d hear the patter of feet.

"It was pitch black, but they knew what they were looking for."

Kelley still has a cat in her life, but it will never return to the wild or call a wildlife sanctuary home.

"I’m down to one domestic gray tabby," she said. "That’s it."

You can call Herald Writer Janice Podsada at 425-339-3029 or send e-mail to podsada@heraldnet.com.