Bodega cats of New York
bodegacatsofnewyork.com189 points by zdw 5 days ago
189 points by zdw 5 days ago
It seems it might've been taken down but there used to be an app called ShopCats that was a crowd-sourced version of this concept
Was so excited when I saw this link. Was hoping it would be more like the Trees of New York [0], but appears to be a book.
The bodega in my last neighborhood (Fort Greene) featured an orange cat, Ice Spice. Spice birthed Olivia who now has loads of kittens. They wander in and own like they own the place, even whining at customers to open the doors for them. Here's a picture I took of Olivia on top of the tobacco products
[0] https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map/neighborhood/177
That sounds profoundly irresponsible of the associated humans.
True. It's unconscionable to give a cat access to cigarettes.
Lots of bodega cats are allowed to go out on the street. They usually don't wander far. Cats know where home is.
It would be irresponsible for a pet owner... but you have to understand the context is New York rats, which exist in immense numbers, massively beyond every other major US city, because of a century of just leaving trash piled up on the sidewalk (https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-11-27/new-yo...).
Bodega cats aren't pets, they're a cheap and low-impact way to keep rats from moving into the bodega en masse. If one gets run over by a car, that's just an unfortunate cost of business for a bodega owner who needs an option that works better than putting glue traps every five feet or fumigating the entire place every week.
> low-impact
As one of the 10% of humanity who has a severe allergy to cats which causes me to be unable to breathe, break out in hives, and weep incredible amounts from every exposed mucus membrane, I had to laugh at this. And cry a little.
Y'all have no idea how high impact cats are.
Fel D proteins seem to trigger immune responses across a broad range of mammals. They are homologs of slow loris venom which also causes intense immune responses. Hypothesis is that they evolved in part by inducing an intense allergic response when the cat is eaten. Which obviously helps the survival of the next cat that predator encounters. It seems to be sheer accident that 90% of humanity isn't bothered by it. Even so, cat allergies are the single most common allergy among humans. Cats shed Fel D 1 everywhere. Being in the same room with one is enough to wreck me for hours to a week. Some folks can control it with medication, but I can't take enough to be in the same room with one.
Rat traps are less expensive, more effective, less prone to killing things other than rats, sanitary, don't have to be fed, don't need a litter box, don't cause allergies, don't need shots, medications, or vet visits, and don't have kittens. Far lower impact than a cat.
Killing rats is just an excuse people use to keep an emotional support critter around. And inconsiderate of 1 in every 10 people in public spaces.
Chicago had a ten-year streak as rattiest city[0]. Recently lost the crown to Los Angeles.
[0] https://www.orkin.com/press-room/worst-cities-for-rats-los-a...
This is Orkin's view, correct? I wonder if its just a matter of controlling more of the market. I can't say I've seen a Western Exterminator guy-with-hammer vs rat adornment in quite some years.
New york's rats arent just anout trash. NYC also has an oldschool combined sewer system, the type where stormwater and sewage share one pipe. Those big air-filled tunnels are the rat/ningaturtle transport infrastructure. Newer cities with separated sewer and stormwater systems dont have nearly as much a problem.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/combined-sewer-overflows....
When i first realized that their primary purpose was to get rid of rats, I had quite the chuckle.
Yeah this is why I dont find it endearing. It's just pointing to unsanitary conditions. It's ubiquitous in NYC which may have dulled some senses but it's not ubiquitous everywhere.
Cat's themselves are not very sanitary. Better than rats, sure, but they are a source of toxoplasmosis which is very dangerous to pregnant women for example. Limiting exposure is manageable when keeping as a pet, but its a terrible baseline for a cramped public store.
> Cat's themselves are not very sanitary. Better than rats, sure, but they are a source of toxoplasmosis
Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together.
In particular: it's a limited time window when an infected feline could transmit toxoplasmosis. It can be dangerous to pregnancies, or immuno-compromised individuals.
Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised, but the drama of the topic gets clicks, so it's a meme of sorts, and it resurfaces every six months or so in the news as if a revelation.
> Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised
Just because pregnant and immuno-compromised people are in the minority, it's not a big deal?
Additionally, I can't imagine being blase about gaining parasites just because you're not pregnant or immunocompromised.
no one is being blase : we're immersed in a biological world teeming with such critters...and we exist through evolutionary adaptation to such. for fun, check out mites around eyelashes, for an innocuous example.
it's a big deal for some, but not for all individuals, is the point clearly made.
Well you wrote "Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together". It's not "hyperbole" to care about others, however few they are, even though you yourself might not be at risk, right?
But I don't mean to be confrontational. I understand that it is probably annoying to hear toxoplasmosis talked about like it is black death.
A third of the entire human population is infected with toxoplasmosis, in some places nearly every human.
If you put humans in a sterile bubble you get a different set of diseases, to a considerably greater degree because your immune system evolved in an environment where you actually got infections.
By that logic, we shouldn't be fighting malaria in Africa either.
Are there any benefits to toxoplasmosis besides some people finding the vector cute? The alternative isn't living in a sterile bubble.
Without infections your immune system gets bored and starts attacking you. You need to have something for your immune system to do on a regular basis. Toxo is to a very large degree asymptomatic. You are full of and covered with organisms. Being paranoid about infection isn't helpful to anyone. Ok you don't like cats, that's fine, but are you as passionate about rare steak which is a much more common vector?
Malaria... is not asymptomatic.
That's not a great comparison. Malaria is dangerous to almost everyone it infects, while T. gondii is harmless to the vast majority of the human race.
> they are a source of toxoplasmosis
You are far more likely to get it from undercooked beef or shellfish than from a cat. Less than 1% of cats broadly are shedding it at any given time and that number is even lower for indoor cats. If, like me, you have a penchant for rare steak and beef tartare then there's a decent chance that you have it.
The vast majority of NYCs problem can be tied to their trash debacle, which is so outlandish it's hard for anyone not from there to believe is a real thing in 2206.
It appears they finally discovered dumpsters recently: https://www.amny.com/news/curbside-empire-trash-bins-coming-...
(Another crazy trash city was (is?) Seattle with their weird judgement causing everyone to compact their trash.)
And the difficulties of trash handling are further traceable, at least in Manhattan, to the decision by city planners in 1811 to not build alleys. No obvious place to store trash, nor an obvious place to put it when being collected.
If you drive in Manhattan you'll also notice a whole lot of delivery trucks and other vehicles blocking lanes, and a lot of designated delivery-only parking zones. This is rooted in the same lack of alleys.
San Francisco doesn't have alleys, either, not anymore than NYC. In older buildings, including older apartment buildings, trash cans are kept under stairways, in service rooms, in ground-level hallways, or for single-family homes in garages or backyards, then wheeled out to the sidewalk the night before collection day, blocking pedestrians. Then the garbage men have to roll those bins into the street, maneuvering around parked cars, etc. NYC doesn't have trash cans because New Yorkers perennially chose to continue to throw their trash on the ground like they always had. Blame unions, blame habituation, but you can't blame NYC's architecture and layout; nothing about it is unique compared to other cities globally or even nationally.
Chicago has allys. Trash goes in ally. Streets smell nice.
NYC has no allys. Trash goes on sidewalk. Streets smell stinky.
What about Seattle's trash was crazy? I've lived here for 14 years and never noticed anything weird about it compared to other places I've lived.
He's being overly dramatic, and it's not a "Judgment", it's simple economics. Seattle is basically out of landfill space, the Cedar Hills landfill is a 96.6% capacity, so all trash needs to be trucked out of state. To minimize the cost of doing that they encourage sending most of your waste stream to recycling or compost instead. Many of the local trash haul haulers provide nice large recycle and compost bins, but a tiny landfill waste container unless you pay extra, hence the necessary compacting and stomping. My hauler charges an extra $25 fee if the flip-down lid on the garbage container is not fully closed, and they send you a photo and video of your non-compliant container along with the bill.
Again, this is not a judgement or a mandate. You can pay for a larger garbage can or for a multiple garbage cans if you want to. But you have to pay for how your consumption habits impact the cost of disposal.
IIRC they got a judgement against them a long time ago and charged more per can to pay for it - but my memory may be off. All I know is all the older homes have trash compactors and there was something called the "Seattle Stomp" and it wasn't a dance. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/jan/26/seattle-stomp-...
You do not recall correctly. That's not an article about Seattle. It's an article about Spokane, which is little college town close to five hours away from Seattle. There was no legal judgement, and there was no municipal government action here. A private corporation raised their prices, and their customers reacted by trying to get more for their money. John Smith's invisible hand continues to sculpt our reality.
“Empire Bins, which can only be picked up by specially-designed side-loading garbage trucks, will be mandatory for the owners of buildings with 30 or more units in those areas to use. …
Anderson said expanding Empire Bins to more parts of the city is “not easy,” due to the expense of and time it takes to acquire the side-loading trucks, which are custom-built and have not been used in North America before. The trucks are assembled through a combination of American and Italian parts and designs.
“These bins and the trucks that service them did not exist two years ago,” Anderson said. “We are now building a new supply chain that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean to get those trucks here, built, and ready to use. That takes time.””
Had to go custom huh…
The reasoning gets worse the further you peel back that onion. Basically dumpsters are too large for sidewalks. Logically, it would make sense to put them on the curb. But no, drivers would complain because having to give up any curbside parking whatsoever.
I was baffled when I first moved to NYC and found out that people just throw their garbage onto the sidewalk.
I have the wheely bin now, which is good, but it's insane that it took until 2025 to actually require it. Probably the only good thing Eric Adams did.
It's still a problem in 2206?
Oh sheesh now I have to leave the typo in (and it'll probably be correct, at least according to the historical documents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SwR_zIWv4 )
NYC was built without alleyways and much of NYC is single vaulted sewer systems due to its age. There is no space to put underground trash bins.
NYC is also non-uniform, so there are different types of trucks and streets.
Adam's admin largely solved this during his term, but the above ground bins are unpopular because they're ugly and then it takes time to retrofit the garbage trucks for mechanical pickup.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...
The rats that the cats are keeping out of the stores are a much larger source of pathogen transmission to humans than the cats are. Not only do rats carry many more dangerous diseases than cats, but both can also transmit toxoplasmosis to humans. As it is transmitted through contact with feces, from which of the two are you more likely to encounter feces spread all over the store?
So, while I actually find both rats and cats endearing, I'd take the cats over wild rats in the stores any day.
I think we owe our civilization to cats - without them we would have never been able to stop being hunters-gatherers and settle into agricultural society as having food stores would have been impossible due to rats.
And Black Death, owing to Church persecution of cats, is another great illustration of cats' role.
You just angered a lot of cat people
In my experience most people lovingly refer to their cats in negative-sounding ways. One of the terms of endearment we used for our most recent cat was "stinky little piss baby". I think most cat owners are well aware that they're unsanitary creatures.
If your housecat stinks, it's likely unhealthy or you're not providing it with a clean litterbox or you have insufficient litterboxes for the number of cats you have.
He got the nickname while he was dying of cancer. He had stopped grooming himself because of his medications.
So you aren't entirely wrong, but rest assured that we were agonizingly aware of the ways in which he was unhealthy.
dog person here : they're unsanitary how? they constantly fastidously clean themselves, from what i see. dogs roll in rotting anything for sport.
I suppose they're unsanitary in the same way all animals that aren't humans are: They don't was their hands? Cats don't strike me a particularly dirty creatures. They're not exactly clean and well groomed from nature, but no animal really is.
> they're unsanitary in the same way all animals that aren't humans are: they don't was[h] their hands
Raccoons say "hold my beer"
If you covered yourself in spit would that be sanitary?
you just made me wonder if the fact we sweat serves a similar purpose as your spit covering example.
(i don't know, but you triggered a thought!)
I read Shop Cats of New York a few years ago, and it was great
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shop-cats-of-new-york-tamar...
Can’t wait for the sequel:
Bodega Rats of New York
As a blow in to New York, I find the bodega cats a very charming tradition. Reminding me of “tough as old boots” farm cats, working animals with a purpose and a style all their own.
I strongly recommend the 2016 documentary titled 'Kedi', which is about the cats of Istanbul. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKq7UqplcL8
Seconding this, it's what I immediately thought of. It's a really beautifully made movie. And yes cats are front and center, but it's also using them as a window on humanity, the city of Instanbul and its living history from a very different perspective. It's a very sober film as well, celebrating life but also not shying away from death and the passing of time. The "cat's eye view" is a more 3D sort of feel from a lot of the typical explorations of a city, going at ground level, up and down buildings in 3D etc.
It's become a family favorite film we tend to watch each winter now. All ages can take something from it.
You can’t have a great product without proper security.
Is it just me or is it a huge letdown that the text is all AI-generated? Or at least, in the same kind of saccharine style? Are people not able to detect this?
Didn't seem AI-generated to me. Just the short, three-word-sentence pithy style that's become really popular these days that LLMs have learned to ape. But IMO it actually works well here, it reminds me of Peter Watts's very human style (cf. eg. https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11546).