LIV ING
—Ladue News, 2012 Platinum List
Reader’s Pick - A List Winner —St. Louis Magazine, 2010
BEST PLACE TO WATCH THE GAME One of the Top 5 Places to Watch the Cardinals
—Riverfront Times, October 2011
Reader’s Choice
—Sauce Magazine, 2008-2011, 2013
BEST SPORTS BAR
One of the 101 Best in U.S. —CNNgo, 2012-2014
A List Winner
—St. Louis Magazine, 2012-2014
BEST
OF THE
BEST
Best Family Restaurant
—Ladue News, 2012-2014 Platinum List
Hot List Winner
—ALIVE Magazine, 2012-2014
THE WINNER IS...
BEST NIGHTLIFE
Best Bar to Bring a Wingman
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
SWIRLY
& the Keefe/Millar Family BY LISA WATSON
ESCAPE TO LESTER’S. Need an escape from a houseful of relatives this holiday season? Come visit Lester’s in Ladue and enjoy our award-winning food and service and the best Happy Hour in town. You are always welcome at Lester’s.
L A D U E 9906 CLAYTON ROAD 314.994.0055
L E S T E R S R E S T A U R A N T. C O M 34
January 9, 2015 {LadueNews.com}
PHOTOS BY SARAH CONARD
O
NCE UPON A TIME...SARAH KEEFE AND HER BOYFRIEND, Pete Millar, packed up their belongings and their cat, Souvlaki, to move from Boston to St. Louis. Millar had gotten a job at Washington University; and Keefe, a freelance web developer, was happy to make the move. “We had this great big apartment with all this space (compared to Boston), so we started thinking about getting another cat,” Keefe says. “We were looking on PetFinder.com —not too seriously at first, but it got more serious. I was looking at pictures and I saw this one named Taffy. We were looking at senior pets because we wanted a cuddly pet, and Souvlaki is really energetic. Taffy was really beautiful and photogenic...and I said to Pete, When are we going to see Taffy? and it became a running joke because we kept waiting to go. Then one Saturday, he said, Let’s go visit Taffy.” And so they did. Taffy was the “lobby cat” at Animal House. “She was friendly with everyone, and we really liked her, and we looked at a bunch of other cats...but we always went back to Taffy,” Keefe says. Though they hadn’t planned on taking her home that day, they’d found the perfect match. “She’s really relaxed and cuddly,” she says. “I work from home, so I get to have a cat on my lap the whole day. Souvlaki wouldn’t do that.” Animal House delivers its cats straight to clients’ homes to help ease the transition, so they set up an appointment for her delivery right away. Taffy—who the couple has renamed Swirly—is a dilute calico, so called because she has lighter markings than a typical calico. “Claudia (Seifert, a board member and adoption coordinator at Animal House) brought her and gave us a welcome package from the shelter. When you introduce a cat to a new home, you keep them in a separate room, and you gradually introduce them to the other cat. It was great having Claudia there: Swirly had someone there she recognized, and it was a good transition from the shelter where she’d been every day to a new house with new smells and people—and a strange cat. They have a good system set up.”