Bodega cats of New York

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zzdw 6 days ago 86 commentsRead Article on bodegacatsofnewyork.com

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jackconsidine•about 24 hours ago

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

[1] https://ibb.co/h1cJTs0g

thread_id•about 8 hours ago

wait what? NYC Parks has a tree map?

jjtheblunt•about 23 hours ago

That sounds profoundly irresponsible of the associated humans.

jkestner•about 23 hours ago

True. It's unconscionable to give a cat access to cigarettes.

fhdkweig•about 23 hours ago

But hilarious to give a raccoon alcohol.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=raccoon+liquor+store

rafram•about 22 hours ago

Lots of bodega cats are allowed to go out on the street. They usually don't wander far. Cats know where home is.

crooked-v•about 22 hours ago

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.

timschmidt•about 10 hours ago

> 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 and much less work than a cat.

Killing rats is just an excuse people use to keep an emotional support critter around. And is unfortunately inconsiderate of 1 in every 10 people in public spaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergy_to_cats

3eb7988a1663•about 12 hours ago

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...

deepnet•about 7 hours ago

Predators discourage most rats and kill some.

Pray spends less time at a location if there are predators. The prey is skittish.

Glue traps kill Rats, new rats fill the niche. Some rats learn to avoid them.

Wolves harry deer and kill some but the deer don’t eat all the baby saplings because fear means they move on more often.

Rats have the numbers, killing some of them isn’t the best solution.

Cats are smart when the rats change behaviour so does the cat.

Older cats teach younger cats.

Glue traps are a completely different solution.

They also kill a lot of spiders so you get more flies.

Nurturing predators is a way better solution.

An NY bodega is an ecosystem.

sandworm101•about 10 hours ago

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....

culi•about 22 hours 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

https://shopcats.en.softonic.com/iphone

chirau•1 day ago

When i first realized that their primary purpose was to get rid of rats, I had quite the chuckle.

nonethewiser•1 day ago

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.

jjtheblunt•about 23 hours ago

> 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.

kirubakaran•about 23 hours ago

> 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?

thenthenthen•about 8 hours ago

Cats spend between 30-50% of their waling hours to grooming themselves. Cats are extremely clean. Pick one up and smell its fur. What do you smell? Nothing.

graemep•about 9 hours ago

It is most likely to cause severe symptoms and obvious damage in pregnancy and to immunocompromised people but it may cause harm to others too.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2526142/

> Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised

So we do not need to vaccinate against rubella either? most people are not disabled so we do not need wheelchair ramps? Most people are not sick at any given time so we do not need hospitals?

bombcar•1 day ago

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.)

blatherard•about 24 hours ago

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.

RandallBrown•about 24 hours ago

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.

Barbing•about 15 hours ago

“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…

addaon•1 day ago

> 2206

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

[Posted from 2026.]

yardie•about 22 hours ago

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.

tombert•about 21 hours ago

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.

pcrh•1 day ago

It's still a problem in 2206?

dirck-norman•about 24 hours ago

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...

alexjplant•about 24 hours ago

> 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.

technothrasher•about 19 hours ago

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.

trhway•about 19 hours ago

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.

vedaba•about 24 hours ago

You just angered a lot of cat people

delecti•about 23 hours ago

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.

sdrm•1 day ago

Paris should take notes

VerifiedReports•about 14 hours ago

I thought Paris's main problem was dog shit.

WetBurritoLuv•about 23 hours ago

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...

cgg1•about 24 hours ago

Can’t wait for the sequel:

Bodega Rats of New York

asimovDev•about 6 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega

Tsiklon•about 18 hours ago

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.

enraged_camel•about 21 hours ago

I strongly recommend the 2016 documentary titled 'Kedi', which is about the cats of Istanbul. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKq7UqplcL8

xoa•about 21 hours ago

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.

noplace1ikegone•about 24 hours ago

You can’t have a great product without proper security.

brenschluss•about 21 hours ago

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?

Sharlin•about 19 hours ago

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).