Six Upper East Side Bodega Cats Featured In New Book

The owner of one Upper East Side shop has been behind the same counter for 35 years, and at this point he has stopped asking why strangers keep showing up with professional camera equipment and crouching down on his floor. They are not shooting the shelves. A lot of them walk out without buying anything at all. By his own rough count, roughly 14,000 people a year come through the door for a reason that has nothing to do with groceries.

They come for Cookie.

Cookie is a four-year-old cat who turned up at the store near 74th and First Avenue as a kitten and simply stayed. She was, for a while, just a cat. Then the cameras started. She has been written up by national outlets, found by strangers through Instagram, and filmed by a crew that flew in from Japan for the specific purpose of pointing a lens at her. Her owner has never entirely understood the appeal, but he lets people shoot. And this fall Cookie is getting the most permanent version of the treatment yet.

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Cookie is one of six cats from the neighborhood appearing in “Bodega Cats of New York,” a 240-page hardcover written by Dan Rimada with photographs by Gulce Kilkis. The book will be published on November 3 by Epic Ink, an imprint of Quarto.

The financial case for a bodega cat gets made most directly by Jimmy, an oversized orange tabby who treats his doorway at 61st and Second Avenue like an assigned post. He greets people, takes a lap, and returns to the same tile facing the street. His owner puts the value of that arrangement at three to four hundred dollars a day, sometimes more, on the theory that people stop for the cat and then buy something on the way out. Asked about mice, the owner was blunt about the division of labor: he handles the mice himself. Jimmy is marketing.

Jimmy also wears a tracker, though not for the reason you would guess. His owner is not worried about him getting lost. He is worried about him being too friendly, and about somebody deciding they love him enough to take him home. The cat knows the store’s full rhythm, including the 3 a.m. close and the 5 a.m. open, and he has a rotation of spots he cycles through. During the book crew’s visit, a UPS driver came in, knelt down, and spent a while showing Jimmy phone photos of other cats on his route. He had not come about a package.

Then there is Manny, a big two-toned-nose cat who parks himself outside his market at 77th and York and monitors the sidewalk like a guy on a stoop. Staff say he tracks everyone: customers, delivery drivers, the tenants upstairs. What impressed the book’s crew most was his timing. According to the workers, Manny has learned to recognize health inspectors on sight, clipboard and all, and vanishes the moment one gets close. Somewhere else. Outside, down a hall, behind the crates. By the time the paperwork is done, he is back on the counter as if nothing happened. Three years in the store, the workers say, and no violations. They are quick to say they never taught him any of it.

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Mia Garfield, a Persian mix working a store near 69th and Second Avenue for the past three years, has built an entire following on a face that suggests she would rather be anywhere else. That is just how her face is built. Behind the permanent scowl she is reportedly a clown: sprawling across the floor, bunny-kicking anyone who tests her stomach, and repeating a signature one-leg-up pose often enough that her followers can identify it. She has a small Instagram account run by a self-described fan, which lists her job titles as bodega manager, security, personality hire, sidewalk model, and UES princess. There is a second cat in that store. You would never know it from the feed.

Mishu has spent five or six years running the front of her store and has the process down: she recognizes the regulars, evaluates the newcomers, and greets anyone who approaches at a reasonable speed. Her one hard rule involves dogs. A worker described the escalation as a warning, then another warning, then two fast and very precise swats for the dog that kept pushing. He was careful to frame it as boundaries rather than aggression. Mishu also disappears when an inspector turns up, though in her case the staff help, walking her downstairs before anyone gets a look at her.

Leena, meanwhile, arrived by way of a favor. She belonged to a regular customer, one of those people the counter staff know by voice, and when he learned he was moving to California he asked the store on York Avenue between 87th and 88th streets whether they would take her. They said yes without much discussion. That was about two and a half years ago. She claimed the space near the entrance and had the store’s schedule memorized inside a week, from the slow mornings through the after-work rush. Her signature move is the one nobody trained. Roughly six months in, Leena started walking certain customers out. Not all of them. She picks. She travels down the aisle alongside whoever has earned it, waits out the transaction, then posts up by the exit and watches them go. The rest of her day is spent inspecting deliveries, supervising the register, and holding down her spot by the door next to the bananas.

“Bodega Cats of New York” is available for preorder now.

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