Meet Bhakti, Leucadia's Resident Beach Cat

If you’re a regular at Beacons Beach, surely you know Bhakti.

Every morning the small cat leaves his home on Neptune Avenue and saunters down to the sand, where he spends the day hanging with the local surfers. After doing this for more than a year, plenty know him by name and he was even the subject of one admirer’s recent photo essay.

Indeed, he's kind of a big deal in Leucadia.

“The community’s reaction to Bhakti shows how people embrace simple joys and beauty around here, and how friendly and welcoming the beach is,” adds owner Carly Mentlik. “From what I've learned about this community by living here, I'm not surprised at all that people love him so much.”

Mentlik is now harnessing some of those good vibes for a worthy cause. Saturday she’ll be at Beacons Beach selling postcards that feature Bhakti, and donating all of that money to the rescue animals at Helen Woodward Animal Center — a natural fit, considering Bhakti was rescued from an animal shelter.

The fundraiser is part of a bigger effort Mentlik calls flash activism, finding very simple yet creative ways to give back to worthy causes. The hope is that these postcards have a ripple effect and inspire others to do their own acts of ‘flash activism.’

Mentlik named her cat after the yoga practice she's dedicated to, and hopes that it will spark an interest in others.

“I really believe in the yoga path of Bhakti and the idea of devotion to truth and life as it unfolds,” she said and then added, “so I thought if people were curious, maybe they'd check out his name and learn about the concept and it would touch them in some way.”

If you’d like to buy a postcard of Bhakti this weekend, head to Beacons Beach  Saturday from 4:30 to sunset. And if you’d like to meet Bhakti, you can usually find him on the bluffs, his favorite catnapping perch.

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