6 ms·
Bodega cats of New York
- chirau 6mo agoWhen i first realized that their primary purpose was to get rid of rats, I had quite the chuckle.
- sdrm 6mo agoParis should take notes
- VerifiedReports 6mo agoI thought Paris's main problem was dog shit.
- nonethewiser 6mo agoYeah 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.
- bombcar 6mo agoThe 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-nyc/ 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.)
- pcrh 6mo agoIt's still a problem in 2206?
- bombcar 6mo agoOh sheesh now I have to leave the typo in (and it'll probably be correct, at least according to the historical documents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SwR_zIWv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SwR_zIWv4 )
- carabiner 6mo agoI'm from 2207 and it's not a big deal.
- bombcar 6mo agoDon't listen to the raccoon.
- addaon 6mo ago> 2206 Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. [Posted from 2026.]
- RandallBrown 6mo agoWhat 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.
- bombcar 6mo agoIIRC 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-blamed-in-garbage-rate-increase/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/jan/26/seattle-stomp-...
- alexjplant 6mo 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.
- vedaba 6mo agoYou just angered a lot of cat people
- delecti 6mo agoIn 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.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agodog person here : they're unsanitary how? they constantly fastidously clean themselves, from what i see. dogs roll in rotting anything for sport.
- kevin_thibedeau 6mo agoIf you covered yourself in spit would that be sanitary?
- jjtheblunt 6mo agoyou 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!)
- imp0cat 6mo agoNope, it's evaporative cooling (like a swamp cooler) for your body.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agothat's only the famous part of the story, though. here's what i was thinking...presence of protein lysing enzymes in sweat as a protective mechanism. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1874391917300064 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187439191...
- jjtheblunt 6mo 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 6mo 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?
- sporadicism 6mo agoAdditionally, I can't imagine being blase about gaining parasites just because you're not pregnant or immunocompromised.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agono 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.
- nkrisc 6mo agoYou’ve likely already got many critters living in an on you.
- darick 6mo agoNot all of those give you brain lesions.
- zdp7 6mo ago
- technothrasher 6mo agoThe 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 6mo agoI 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.
- throwaway29812 6mo ago[dead]
- Amezarak 6mo agoCats were not widespread in the ancient world until very late. Herodotus writes about cats as an Egyptian novelty. People had mass food stores long before then.
- trhway 6mo agoHerodotus' anecdotes vs. modern genetics: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790555/#:~:text=Experts%20traditionally%20thought%20that%20the,agriculture%20was%20getting%20under%20way. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790555/#:~:text=Ex... "But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way." Edit in response to the comment below as i hit post-limit: As it happens, we owe to weasels too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats#Ancient_Greece_and_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats#An... "Housecats seem to have been extremely rare among the ancient Greeks and Romans;[16] the Greek historian Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.[16] Even during later times, weasels were far more commonly kept as pets[16] and weasels, not cats, were seen as the ideal rodent-killers" The main point still stands though.
- noplace1ikegone 6mo agoYou can’t have a great product without proper security.
- cgg1 6mo agoCan’t wait for the sequel: Bodega Rats of New York
- jackconsidine 6mo agoWas 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 https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map/neighborhood/177 [1] https://ibb.co/h1cJTs0g https://ibb.co/h1cJTs0g
- jjtheblunt 6mo agoThat sounds profoundly irresponsible of the associated humans.
- jkestner 6mo agoTrue. It's unconscionable to give a cat access to cigarettes.
- fhdkweig 6mo agoBut hilarious to give a raccoon alcohol. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=raccoon+liquor+store https://duckduckgo.com/?q=raccoon+liquor+store
- rafram 6mo agoLots of bodega cats are allowed to go out on the street. They usually don't wander far. Cats know where home is.
- crooked-v 6mo agoIt 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-york-city-generates-44-million-pounds-of-garbage-a-day-the-city-has-a-plan-to-contain-the-mess 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.
- WetBurritoLuv 6mo agoI 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-arslanian/1123384148 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shop-cats-of-new-york-tamar...
- culi 6mo agoIt 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 https://shopcats.en.softonic.com/iphone
- enraged_camel 6mo agoI strongly recommend the 2016 documentary titled 'Kedi', which is about the cats of Istanbul. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKq7UqplcL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKq7UqplcL8
- xoa 6mo agoSeconding 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.
- brenschluss 6mo agoIs 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 6mo agoDidn'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 https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11546).
- Tsiklon 6mo agoAs 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.
- asimovDev 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega
- 486sx33 6mo ago[dead]