Let me introduce us: my name is Nicole & I own Cat & Mouse Plants with my dad, Mike. Though we most definitely have our own opinions on plant care, what our favorite plants are & drainage holes, we both are what I call, “neglectful plant lovers.” Neither of us always remembers to water, nor do we always maintain perfectly groomed collections. We love plants, of course, but our care style has never been particularly attentive.

Mike & Nicole at Vintage Market Days 2025

Our journey into plant ownership started as a casual hobby. My dad had always had plants around his house when I was growing up, but was never a serious collector. From time to time, he’d find a new tropical plant or cactus to add to his front window, but at most, he probably had 15 plants. When I was in high school, I started to become increasingly interested in plants—especially flowering ones. Yet, I couldn’t keep a single plant alive until I was well into college. I would run to the nursery & buy several new plants (always without looking up their care instructions), bring them home & plant them in my pretty pots, slowly watch them deteriorate & dry up, before feeling awful about myself & throwing them all away. I did this over & over again, cycling through plants at least twice a year.

While I still lived at home, my dad would often inherit some of my worst plants, usually bringing them back to life. In fact, a good portion of his current collection has come from some of those rejects.

For a long time, I really felt like I’d never be able to care for plants. I felt like I just had a black thumb & that was that. Some people are just good with plants & others aren’t. If 18 year old me knew I was regularly caring for over 1,000 plants (& they were thriving!), she’d never believe it. The truth is, there is no big secret when it comes to caring for houseplants. It comes with experience. Once you can understand light & watering, there isn’t a single plant you couldn’t keep alive. At Cat & Mouse, we believe having the right support is crucial. So, we’ve structured our business around education.

No Judgement Zone

I think of plants like I think of hair. It’s incredibly personal & often emotional. If you’ve ever had a bad haircut, you probably know what I mean. It’s natural to have a lot of attachment to your plants & their wellbeing. You wouldn’t believe how many people tell me their plants’ health is directly linked to their mental health & self esteem.

The best thing you could do for yourself when diving into a plant journey is remove that sense of morality surrounding houseplant care. Everyone has off-months. Everyone has big things come up that get in the way of regular watering & plant care. & not every plant will thrive under your care. Once you are able to see a dead plant as just a dead plant, not some big moral failing, it takes the weight off plant care.

At Cat & Mouse, there are no bad questions. You don’t have to have a baseline knowledge of plants to come into our shop & leave feeling confident you can care for your new plant. Our goal is to make people comfortable enough to ask any question about their plant without embarrassment. We all have to start somewhere, & we hope you’ll start right here, with us.

Inventory Hand-selected by Us

Every plant that comes into our shop has been hand-picked & carefully examined by us. We only choose the highest quality plants to bring in. Plants that are pest & disease free, with new growth & established root systems. If it isn’t a plant we’d purchase as a consumer, it isn’t one we’d stock.

If you are interested in learning more about what we look for when shopping for plants, visit our Instagram or check out our blog.

Most of our plants come from a wholesale greenhouse in the Seattle area, about 5 hours from our shop. Every 2-3 weeks we make a 22-hour round trip to pick up new plants & vintage items from western Washington. Our day usually begins at 4AM, arriving in Seattle around 10AM (with some stops for vintage shopping & breakfast along the way), picking up plants most of the afternoon, eventually leaving Seattle around 8PM, returning home close to 2AM. The very next day we bring the plants into the shop for you to shop by 10AM. It’s absolutely exhausting, but most of my favorite memories have come from these trips.

Because of how we stock, we are able to bring you a wide variety of rare & collectible houseplants. After a restock, we typically house just shy of 1,300 plants, including over 250 varieties, all within our 600 square foot footprint. If we don’t have what you are looking for, we’ll go out of our way to try & stock it for you. Reach out to us & we’ll add your plant to our wishlist.

Intimate Knowledge of All Our Plants

Between the two of us, we can tell you how every single plant in our shop grows, what its best environment looks like, what its most common issues are, what the blooms would look like & if it is pet-safe or not. & if you ask us something we don’t know, we’ll always be honest. Because of this intimate knowledge, we feel confident when we recommend plants based on care style, placement & experience.

Neither of us know everything about every plant, but what we do stock, we take pride in knowing intimately. Like you, we are both always learning something new about plants. I would say almost every day I at least learn one new thing—which is exactly why I love plants! There is always something to learn, always some new plant I’ve never seen before, always someone who has a different experience with a plant that I would’ve otherwise never known. Our knowledge of plants stems from our shared value of continued learning & curiosity. We learn by inviting questions, by listening to others’ experiences with plants & by constantly seeking new information—all virtues we try to encourage here at Cat & Mouse Plants.

Plants That Have Been Cared For

A lot of hours get put in behind the scenes to ensure all of our plants are well maintained & thriving. Most days, you’ll find one of us (or our employee, Jerilyn) at the shop watering. About once a week, we inspect & clean every plant to prevent pests. When we bring new plants in, they are all preventatively treated for pests & most are repotted by us in a soil mix we handmake.

We regularly have what we call “rehab plants” for sale at Cat & Mouse. These are plants the greenhouse rejected for one reason or another, usually they fell out of their pot, grew too big, had some sort of leaf damage, etc. We take the time to nurse them back to health & sell them to you at a hefty discount, usually 60-70% off retail.

Rehab plant or not, every one of our plants is picked up by one of us almost daily. We watch them grow, celebrate blooms & take great pride in their health. Our plants are treated like the living things they are, rather than a consumable product designed to be thrown away. Our industry standard is 40% loss between the grower & consumer—most of that loss being at plant shops & nurseries. At Cat & Mouse, we consistently keep our loss below 5%. & that is all because we truly love our plants. I like to think it shows.

Keep Local Business Alive, Shop Small!

We’ve seen firsthand how many small businesses are going out of business in recent months. We’ve even had one of our locations fail already. Owning a small business has always been hard, but as Amazon & Big Box stores continue to undercut pricing, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for local businesses to compete. Without your support, the end of the small business might be here sooner rather than later.

As of writing this post, our biggest competition isn’t other local nurseries, but Home Depot & Lowe’s. On occasion, they are able to bring in plants that might retail for 25% less than we could possibly sell them for. Often these box stores sell plants at a loss to get customers in the doors & they are treated as consumable (single-use, buy again & again) products. While I don’t expect anyone to completely ignore a great deal when it comes around in a Big Box store, I hope you’ll consider shopping small first. Our business model centers around providing a valuable service: personalized education. When you go to a large corporate-owned nursery, who do you ask about a plant you own that just isn’t doing well anymore? Who do you bring your grandma’s 75 year old hoya that desperately needs a repot to survive? Who helps you choose a plant that is right for the lighting in your new house? We answer your questions without hesitation, no paywall or sales push. Shopping with us first ensures that we’ll still be around when you need us most.

Family Owned & Operated

We are a father-daughter duo dedicated to helping real people with their plants. Sharing this business with my dad has been the biggest blessing of my life, & one I am so happy to get to share with all of you.

We often joke that you’d have to be absolutely crazy to do what we do—but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why Buy Your Plant From Cat & Mouse