Our Story
How Heartfelt started with 5 very unimpressed cats
Apr
Our lives have always revolved around animals. Rescue work, fostering, boarding and adoptions eventually led us to becoming full-time cat parents to our 5 rescue indie cats. Over the years, we developed a deep understanding of their ways.
With more than 13 years of caregiving, we had already tried almost every brand of toys, beds, caves and catnip out there. And we were especially fed up with all the plastic, mass produced and honestly boring products for cats.
One day while shopping online for catnip toys, we found ourselves talking about how there’s rarely anything cute and safe for cats in India. Every pet store or marketplace has the same plastic or polyester products. It may work for some pet parents, but our cats were not amused.
It also started to feel like these products weren’t designed by real cat parents. Our cats wouldn’t even look at a new toy, but would happily play with the packaging instead, which says a lot. The toys aren’t engaging enough, the catnip isn’t potent, and there’s barely any thought behind understanding their behaviour and needs. Even beds and caves felt like an afterthought, made from cheap materials that fade, tear and eventually get thrown out, adding to more waste.
Everything was plastic or polyester and we don’t know about you, but the rule of thumb is if you don’t use plastic for yourselves, for your bottles or dish ware, or even for their bowls and litter boxes, why are we okay with giving them plastic to play with and chew on? We had also come across horror stories of cats falling severely ill from ingesting plastic while playing.
Discovering Felt
Then one day we noticed Luna had been obsessed with a toy made from the fur collected from her brush. We had washed it with soap and felted it into a ball, without even knowing what wet-felting was at the time. But the way she jumped around and bounced off the walls with it, we knew we were onto something.
It wasn’t the smoothest process. We researched, made cold calls and spent months reading about felt, all while one of us was recovering from a major spine issue. We went down a very deep internet rabbit hole and somehow landed on the felt industry in Nepal. Along the way, we also came across ‘lanolin’, a natural oil found in sheep wool that cats are instinctively drawn to, which explained a lot.
Felt in Nepal traces back to ancient Himalayan practices, influenced by Tibetan nomadic communities who used wool to create durable, weather resistant textiles. Even today, the process remains largely unchanged. Wool fibres are layered, wetted, pressed and rolled entirely by hand. It is labour intensive, skill based and not dependent on machines, which also means no two pieces are exactly the same.
What really stood out to us was that the felt industry is also community led and women driven.
Coming from homes where craft and handmade work have always been valued, this felt important from the start. Our partners are fair-trade certified, ensure fair wages, and create a positive, women led work environment, with 90% artisans being women. Having spent time with them, seeing their work and how warm and welcoming everyone was, we felt very lucky to be part of this journey.
All our products are hand-felted from 100% NZ merino wool, which is a sheep breed known for producing really fine, soft fibres. Merino wool is naturally hypoallergenic, antimicrobial and temperature regulating, which makes it safer, cleaner and just better overall for cats. Even for dogs, felted merino wool is great for their dental and oral hygiene.
We started super small, ordering just a few pieces at first to see how it all worked. At that point, we hadn’t even thought about catnip yet. But once we received our first samples, we knew.
We tested the market for over a year, selling mostly to friends, family and our cat boarding clients through Instagram, WhatsApp and a very chaotic Google form. The response was overwhelming. Yoda, one of our senior cats, played for an hour at a stretch. Bushky, an otherwise anxious cat, started socialising more after being included in playtime. Luna obviously got the best deal because she got her own felt chipkali (lizard) later on. Storm, another of our senior cats who was disabled towards the end (rest in peace!), loved napping inside her cave. Cat parents were telling us that their cats went from not playing with any toy, and never using a bed to actually playing non-stop, sleeping, chilling and practically living inside their cat caves!
We also heard from parents of PICA cats (cats that have a tendency to chew or ingest non-food items like plastic, fabric or paper), who told us they could finally play with their cats safely for the first time.
After a year of testing the market, we decided to go all in. We worked on everything ourselves, our branding, catalogue images, campaigns, and building the website from scratch. Thankfully, with the mentorship and help of some very nice hoomans along the way, we finally went live on the 20th of April 2025 (because 420!)
After two years of building this, what stayed constant is that we didn’t start Heartfelt to build a brand. We started it because we were looking for something that didn’t exist yet for our own cats. Safer, sustainable, thoughtfully made, and actually felt like it was made for our bbs.
It started with our cats not playing with anything we bought them, and somehow turned into something we now get to build for so many others.
Even now, everything still comes back to the same thing. If they love it, we know we’re doing something right.
Cat Caves
Cat Toys
