About us
Adoption, foster care and hospice: one home for every stage of a cat’s life.
The Von Cleveland Foundation helps shelter and rescue cats find homes, fosters cats for people going through a crisis, and cares for cats at the end of their lives. All of this began at Frisky Business Palm Springs Cat Café. We are now bringing it into the Foundation so it can grow, and, in time, become a lifelong sanctuary.
Program 1 · Operating now through Frisky Business
Adoption: helping shelter and rescue cats get seen.
Frisky Business has a welcoming café and a separate cat lounge where people meet adoptable cats as individuals, rather than names on kennel cards. Spending relaxed time together lets a cat’s real personality show, and helps people make an adoption that lasts. Since opening in December 2022, 174 cats have gone home with families who met them here.
Our cats come to us from The Palm Springs Animal Shelter and, in special circumstances, directly: community cats, survivors of abuse and hoarding, strays and surrendered cats. We usually care for 12 to 19 cats at a time.
A cat waiting in a kennel is easy to overlook. Visibility is what turns a shelter cat into an adopted one.
10 OF 10
cats fostered through a crisis have been reunited with their person or placed in a loving home.
We began this work in 2026, and fostered nine cats in our first six months. Today it happens case by case through Frisky Business, which covers the cost.
Program 2 · Operating case by case · Formal program in development
Crisis foster care: when life falls apart, your cat shouldn’t have to go too.
When someone enters rehab, needs surgery, leaves an unsafe home or loses their housing, they can be forced to choose between getting help and keeping the cat they love. We care for their cat in the meantime, at no cost to them, until they are able to be together again.
A woman entering a two-month rehabilitation program, with no money for boarding, came home to her cat. A person recovering from major surgery was reunited with theirs after five months. When a mother and her children fled to a safe house that could not take animals, we had her cat neutered, vaccinated and microchipped, and found it a loving new home.
Program 3 · Operating now · Sanctuary is the long-term goal
Hospice care: love and dignity, to the very end.
Some cats are too old or too ill to be adopted. Over nearly four years, we have chosen to take in ten hospice cats, so their final months could be warm, safe and full of attention.
Blackie came to us partly blind and nearly deaf, after a year in a shelter. Every morning he was greeted the same way: “Where is Blackie, my little old man?” He lived five and a half more months. One morning he climbed out of his bed and died in Claire’s arms.
We also care for cats with complex medical needs. Buddha, once called Tangerine, spent three years in a shelter with severe epilepsy and muscles weakened from lack of walking. Sonny taught him to walk again, and it took six months to get his medication right, bringing his seizures down from several a day to about once a month. He lives with us now.
How Frisky Business joins the Foundation, and how we keep it fair, is explained under Governance and in Questions donors ask.
Governance
The Von Cleveland Foundation is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, incorporated in 2023, and a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 93-2577900). It is overseen by a four-member board. Claire leads the work as Executive Director, a staff role, and is not on the board, so the people who run the work are separate from the people who oversee it. We never describe a program as open before it is, we use gifts only for the purposes we describe, and every donor receives a written acknowledgment.
Board of Directors
Samuel Wilcox (Sonny Von Cleveland), President
Jill Setzer, Secretary
Michael Borza, Treasurer
Amos Cheek, Director
Executive Director
Claire Rogers (Claire Von Cleveland)
Organization
501(c)(3) public charity
EIN 93-2577900
Claire and Sonny work professionally as Claire and Sonny Von Cleveland. Their legal names, as they appear on the Foundation’s filings, are Claire Rogers and Samuel Wilcox.
Our story
We are Claire and Sonny Von Cleveland, known to our regulars as Mrs. and Mr. Frisky. Claire has cared for and rescued cats in more than 70 countries, through a career that took her from modeling in Tokyo to American Express in London, and then to coaching leaders on wellbeing and workplace culture. Sonny is an author and speaker who draws on his own journey through abuse and incarceration to help others find a second chance. In June 2021, we came together in Palm Springs, looking for a new chapter.
Frisky Business began with a shadow. A few weeks after the move, camping in Big Bear, we looked up and saw a tree branch cast a shadow on the roof of our tent that looked exactly like a cat. Claire said she would love to open a cat café: somewhere shelter cats could finally be seen, and people could come together. Sonny didn’t hesitate. “Why don’t we do that, then?”
Turning that idea into a real café took sixteen months, an 80-page business plan and more than a few landlords who laughed, hung up or never called back. Frisky Business Palm Springs Cat Café finally opened in December 2022, the first cat café in the Coachella Valley.
Our very first adoption happened that same day. Phantom, a shy black longhair, went home with a man who told us he was a little socially awkward too. Six months later, he came back for Sinatra. Since then, more than 175 cats have found their families with us.
What we learned
People didn’t only come to adopt. They came after a diagnosis, a divorce or the loss of a parent. They came because they were entering rehab, leaving an unsafe home or moving a loved one into care, and didn’t know who would look after their cat. None of them lacked love for their cats. They had simply run out of options.
Why the Foundation
We started The Von Cleveland Foundation in 2023 to support people rebuilding their lives. Every day at Frisky Business showed us how closely the struggles of people and animals are tied together, so we brought the Foundation’s mission to the place where they meet. Today, all of this work is carried by one small business and two people. The Foundation gives it structure, governance and the resources to grow, so it no longer depends on any one business or any two people.
What we believe
We ask one more question. Before the answer becomes surrender, we ask what else might be possible: adoption, a few months of foster care, or a home for life.
Second chances, for cats and people. No cat should be judged by its age or a diagnosis, and no person by the hardest chapter of their life.
The bond is worth protecting. No one should have to choose between getting help and keeping their cat.
Compassion has to be practical. We are honest about what we do today and what we are still building, and we work alongside shelters, never against them.
Frisky Business and the Foundation
Frisky Business is currently a separate business owned by Claire, and it funds the work described on this site. Our goal is to bring it into the Foundation. Because Claire owns the café and her husband, Sonny, sits on the board, we hold this to a higher standard: the price will be set by an independent appraisal and Claire will sell below it; the Foundation will pay in monthly installments with no interest; the board will approve it without Sonny taking part; and it will be reported publicly on our annual IRS return. Until then, café purchases are not charitable donations.