IT'S DESIGNED WITH THE PETS' FUR IN MIND

INSPIRED BY HIS CATS, HE CREATED AN ELEGANT REFUGE IN WEST HOLLYWOOD

- BY LISA BOONE

Photographs by KIT KARZEN For The Times

"MY ORIGINAL inspiration was to match the furniture to the kitties so I don't see their cat hair," says Jeffrey Hamilton, left, of his design choices.

Jeffrey Hamilton came to live in an empty condominium, as many do, after a painful breakup.

“It was a stressful time even though it was an amicable breakup,” says the 38-year-old anesthesiologist. “I had two weeks to move and was desperate to find something.”

Hamilton, who is drawn to “gallery-esque white boxes,” ultimately settled in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects-designed condo four blocks away. With few possessions other than his cats, he proceeded to furnish the West Hollywood unit with secondhand items he found primarily on Facebook Marketplace.

During the process, he says, he found himself.

“It was the first time I had lived on my own in a long time and it was nice to listen to my own instincts,” says Hamilton, sitting in the living room of his elegant condo, which he now shares with his boyfriend David Poli, his cats Romulus and Remus and Poli’s Husky mix, Janeway (named for Kathryn Janeway, the first female captain on the television series “Star Trek: Voyager”). All the pets are rescues.

“Jeffrey likes to say that everything in his apartment is a rescue, including me,” says Poli jokingly.

When Hamilton adopted his cats six years ago during his medical residency in San Diego, they were kittens; now, as adults, he says, the spotted Bengal cats have not just grown but have influenced his design choices in his new home.

"My original inspiration was to match the furniture to the kitties so I don't see their cat hair," he says. “The cats very much informed the color scheme. I find them so handsome; it felt like having matching furniture was practical.”