Brooke Steele holds their cat, Zeitun, at the Tri Sug house on Hamilton Pl.
It started as a side project of the Michigan Electronic Music Collective, and six of the eight (non-feline) tenants are DJs or musicians. | Mark Bialek
On Hamilton Pl., just a few blocks west of U-M’s central campus, it’s standard to wake up to the familiar sounds of the city: passing cars, roommates, construction. However, at Tri Sug—a house shared by U-M students that doubles as an underground music venue—their morning starts instead with a loud meow from just outside the window.
That’s Zeitun. An official resident of Tri Sug, he makes sure his presence is known bright and early every morning.
“At 5 or 6 a.m., he will meow at my window to be let in,” explains Zeitun’s owner, Brooke Steele. “When I open it, he’ll make some friendly chirps, go eat some food, and then come back and take his morning nap.”
Steele, a recent U-M grad with a degree in art and a concentration in computer science, says that the early-bird cat, named after the Arabic word for “olive” thanks to his distinct coloring, has become an important element of both their house and their neighborhood.
“He became a mascot of Tri Sug as our house’s identity formed,” Steele recounts. “He was so friendly and liked to sit in the basement and listen to our music.”
Tri Sug (an inside joke and parody of a frat house name) was established in the summer of 2024 by Steele and their friend and roommate, Fiend Davis. Of the eight tenants at the house, six are DJs or musicians, and most are U-M students. Though initially started as a side project of the Michigan Electronic Music Collective, Tri Sug quickly became its own entity. They host musically diverse events once or twice a month—“We’ll have a tech house show one week, then a black metal show the next,” explains Steele—that allow the DJs to experiment with other musically minded peers.
“It’s all about giving people the space to create whatever they want, no matter how stupid it is,” Steele says. “We want to be smart about being stupid, basically, meaning we try anything, but we do it very well.”
When Zeitun isn’t hanging out at a Tri Sug show, he’s transforming the entire neighborhood around Hamilton Pl. into his home.
“He loves to roam the block and say ‘hi’ to everyone,” says Steele. The neighbors have come to love the wayfaring cat, they say, and his daily escapades have ranged so widely that Steele put their phone number on Zeitun’s collar, just in case.
“He’s famous for just going into anyone’s house to hang out with them. … Every once in a while I’ll get a text from someone commenting that they saw my cat, and that he’s so friendly and cute,” Steele says. “Sometimes they send pics, too, which I always love.”