on bodega cats

Some things are just fixtures of everyday New York life, like pizza, bagels, scaffolding and bodega cats.

What's a bodega? Let Nathan Pyle explain oh-so-efficiently:





Bodega cats are, well, the mysterious creatures that comfortably take residence in these tiny spaces, suspiciously waving their tails up and down the detergent aisle.

They're sometimes hard to notice because they're as much at home there as the five-year-old ice cream sandwich is in the back of the freezer.



The first bodega cat I ever met was Jack (pictured above). I guess technically speaking, he's a wine shop cat. But the wine shop has the spirit of a bodega (in that it seems older than everything else on its block), and Jack has the spirit of a bodega cat - "regally grumpy" would be the best way to put it. Each time I've stepped foot in there, he's been in a slightly different location, and it's become a sort of game for my friend and me to find him - on the counter, in front of the wine coolers, balled up on the stack of boxes beside the doorway. Each time, he looks so permanently planted there, you'd think he only ever existed in that one spot. As for his expression, his scowl is so stubbornly fixed that from the moment I saw him, I couldn't help but to love him deeply.

Anyway I was thinking about it, and it came to me that maybe Jack and his brethren are as good a metaphor as any for the average New Yorker: isolated, but at home. Adopted and adapted. Irritable, suspicious, a little mysterious and extremely private. But also, maybe not. Maybe they're actually full of love and light and good stories and they just need someone patient enough to coax them out.

So here's a silly little song I wrote about that.

bodega cat, where are you from?
bodega cat, are you havin' fun?
bodega cat, wait for me
maybe you can tell me a story

you can come over to my house
maybe catch a mouse or two
I could make you a homemade treat
now couldn't that be pretty neat, bodega cat?

what have you seen?
what do you know?
where have you been and
where will you go?

bodega cat, I think that we
could have some lively
conversations, if only
you'd just look in my face
couldn't I be a friend?
or do you wanna be like this
'til the very end, bodega cat?

what are your hopes?
what are your dreams?
what would you do if you
could do anything?

bodega cat, what have you seen?
bodega cat, what do you know?
bodega cat, where have you been?
bodega cat, where will you go?