Kava, cats, art, and common ground
Kava Kats is Kat Presnell’s independent student portfolio and a growing guide to kava, creativity, and the people who find one another around a shared table in Boone, North Carolina.
It started with a drawing. Then came a screen print, a few T-shirts, an unexpected job, and a much bigger idea: sometimes making something sincere is how a person finds the next place they belong.
It started with a school project
Before Kat worked at Noble Kava, she created a Kava Kats design for a school screen-printing assignment. Her original drawing placed two wide-eyed cats beside a communal kava bowl and gave the project a home: Boone, NC.
A few weeks later, Kat found herself working at the same place she had made the shirts for. The assignment became a connection. The connection became a job. And the job became part of a wider community.
That story is the center of Kava Kats.
New to kava?
Kava is a traditional Pacific beverage made from the root or rhizome of Piper methysticum. People often describe it as earthy, relaxing, and social, but it is also psychoactive and is not risk-free.
You do not need to be an expert—or drink anything—to enter the conversation. Start with the questions people actually ask:
- What is kava?
- What does kava feel like?
- What happens at a kava bar?
- Is kava addictive?
- What should someone know about the liver, medications, or driving?
- How is kava different from kratom?
Come for the kava. Stay for the people.
The best thing about a community table is not what is in the cup. It is the chance to sit down without having to perform, meet someone outside your usual circle, make something, listen, laugh, and become more than strangers.
Kava Kats is built around a simple conviction: people matter before they agree, before they buy anything, and before they have their lives figured out.
A clear word about recovery
Some people—including people we know and love—describe kava or traditional kratom tea as part of their story of moving away from alcohol or harder drugs. Their experience is real. It is not proof that either plant treats addiction, and this site will never present it that way.
Recovery has many paths. If any substance begins to feel necessary just to function, that deserves honesty and support—not shame.
Original work by Kat
Kava Kats is also a working student portfolio: the original drawing, the screen-printing assignment, the finished shirts, the process behind them, and the future Kava K9s/Kava Canines collection.
The work is still growing. That is part of the point.
Independent-project notice
Kava Kats is an independent student and community-information project by Kat Presnell. It is not the official Noble Kava website, and it is not owned, operated, reviewed, or endorsed by Noble Kava.
Noble Kava is named here because it is part of Kat’s own story — she made shirts for it as a school project and was later hired there. Nothing on this site should be read as speaking for that business, describing how it operates, or representing its views.