The bodega cat is the most honest judge in New York City. It sits on the counter next to the register and it watches everybody who walks in and it does not care about your money or your clothes or your job. It cares whether you are the kind of person who reaches over and scratches behind its ear. That is the test. The bodega cat divides the world into two kinds of people. People who pet the cat. People who do not. The cat remembers.

Every bodega on the Lower East Side had a cat. The cat was not a pet. The cat was an employee. Its job was mice. The mice came for the bread and the chips and the cat came for the mice and the bodega owner came for the rent and the whole operation was an ecosystem. The health department said no animals in a food establishment. The bodega owner said the cat is not an animal. The cat is staff. This argument has been happening since 1965 and nobody has won it.

The bodega cat on Avenue C was named Chairman. He weighed eighteen pounds and he sat on the newspapers by the door like a bouncer. You could not enter the bodega without Chairman's approval. He would look at you and if he did not move you were cleared. If he hissed you were not welcome and the bodega owner would watch you more carefully because Chairman was never wrong about people. Eighteen pounds of security system. No badge. No uniform. Just whiskers and judgment.

I played guitar on the sidewalk in front of a bodega on East Seventh Street and the cat would come out and sit next to my guitar case. People thought the cat was part of the act. They were right. The cat understood busking better than most humans. It sat there looking pathetic and beautiful and people threw extra quarters in the case because of the cat. The cat was my business partner. We never discussed the split. The cat took payment in head scratches and I took payment in coins. Fair deal.

The new bodegas do not have cats. They have security cameras. Twelve cameras covering every angle of a store the size of a closet. The cameras do not catch mice. The cameras do not judge your character. The cameras do not sit next to a guitar case and earn you extra quarters. The cameras watch. That is all they do. The bodega cat watched too. But the cat also purred. The cat also rubbed against your ankle on a bad day and made the day less bad. Try getting that from a camera. The bodega cat was a public service. The camera is a surveillance system. The neighborhood knows the difference.

See also: Candy Store Cat, Corner Store