Stream It Or Skip It?

The Hallmark Channel closes out the November portion of its Countdown to Christmas with Christmas at the Catnip Café. In addition to featuring plenty of fetching felines, this romance movie centers on a West Coast marketing executive (Erin Cahill) who has been willed half-owneriship of her late aunt’s (Frances Flanagan) cat café in upstate New York. Although she’s determined to sell the place so she can afford her dream home, a handsome local veterinarian (Paul Campbell), who owns the other half of the café, refuses to let her sell. But when a final holiday celebration at the café forces the two to work together, they start falling hard for the café and each other in the process.

The Gist: Olivia Pierce (Erin Cahill) is a marketing executive running her own company in Oakland, California. Though she makes good money, she still can’t quite afford her own home, but has been saving for years and is now almost ready to close on her dream condo. Then Olivia is informed that her beloved late Aunt Esther (Frances Flanagan) has willed her as half-owner of a cat café in Felicity, NY, and she sees this as the purr-fect way to finally purchase her own place.

But when Olivia makes the trip up to New York with the express purpose of getting her other co-owner to agree to sell the entire business to developer Walter Morley (Darren Dolynski) as fast as possible, she’s met with resistance. Co-owner Dr. Ben Kane (Paul Campbell) is overworked both as a local veterinarian and as the town’s de facto unpaid handyman, but he’s still willing to dedicate as much time and effort as he can to ensuring that Olivia doesn’t sell the Catnip Café. The café is a Felicity staple that helps the cats there to get adopted into their forever homes while giving back to the community whenever they can.

Esther was adored by café patrons and Felicity locals alike, and Ben hopes to continue honoring her legacy and traditions at Catnip in her stead, but is struggling to pull it all off on his own. Seeing his dilemma, Olivia offers to help Ben pull off all of the business’s big annual holiday festivities and events as long as he agrees to sell the Catnip Café by Christmas. However, the more they work together, the closer Olivia and Ben get, complicating things for both of them. Ben has always struggled to put his own happiness first and doesn’t know how to ask for help or ask Olivia to stay. Meanwhile, Olivia grew up moving from place to place with her parents, making her desperate to put down roots. When her dear Aunt Esther’s café has Olivia falling hard for the town of Felicity, Catnip’s cats, and the good doctor Ben, she’s forced to rethink the life she’d built and imagined for herself in California.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Christmas at the Catnip Café may remind you of other animal-focused Hallmark holiday movies like A Dog Named Christmas, Eat, Play, Love, and The Nine Lives of Christmas.

Performance Worth Watching: The humans in this are solid, but the cats are the true stars. The adorable furballs are here to steal the show and your heart along the way.

Memorable Dialogue: “You know it’s a pretty small town, it’s not every day a beautiful, eligible woman just waltzes in off the street,” Ben says before looking at Olivia and adding, “It does happen though. Occasionally.” It’s suave lines like this that could woo a person into leaving their life and dream home behind for a man and a cat café on the other side of the country.

A Holiday Tradition: For the last five years, the café has hosted “Catnip Christmas,” a whole host of holiday celebrations complete with events like a Merry Mistletoe Market, Catap Christmas Pajama Party and Movie Night, Merry Catmas Movie Night, and a big Christmas party.

Does The Title Make Any Sense? The movie revolves around holiday festivities celebrated and special memories made at the Catnip Café, so Christmas at the Catnip Café is a truly fitting title.

Our Take: On one hand, Christmas at the Catnip Café is an easily digestible holiday movie, but on the other hand, it’s not the most noteworthy or entertaining compared to others in this year’s Countdown to Christmas. While Erin Cahill and Paul Campbell do have some endearing interactions and fun moments of banter as romantic leads, Olivia and Ben, overall, the acting and script are just standard Hallmark fare. However, there’s one thing that might trick you into thinking this movie is charming and unique, and that is the presence of many enchanting cats.

Cats are notoriously hard to wrangle and direct, so they definitely make for some unruly actors, and I’m impressed that Hallmark took a chance on having a bevy of felines be the film’s centerpiece. And not only are the cats precious, but they also carry this movie on their tiny paws as their presence in almost every scene ensures that you’ll often be smiling, regardless of what’s actually going on in Christmas at the Catnip Café, just by sheer virtue of their potent cuteness. While that can be nice, it isn’t exactly the recipe for a magnificent movie, so while this title is pleasant and sweet enough, it isn’t necessarily one you’d want to go out of your way to see.

Our Call: Christmas at the Catnip Café is definitely not a bad movie by any means, but the only things that set it apart or make it memorable compared to other Hallmark movies are the cats. I mean, if you really love cats and this crew of actors, then perhaps just that is enough to make this worth a watch, but the average viewer may just want to SKIP IT.

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How To Watch Christmas at the Catnip Café

The only way to watch Hallmark Channel live without cable is by using a live TV streaming service. We recommend DIRECTV, which comes with a five-day free trial before payment begins.

DIRECTV offers a number of flexible subscription options, including Genre Packs, so you can best choose which streaming plans fit your needs and budget. Plans start at $49.99/month.

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Maddy Casale is a Chicago-based writer and comedian who covers everything from animated series to Hallmark movies. Follow her on Duolingo @MCasale.