What are Bodega Cats?

Bodega cats are store cats. They live in and around a corner store or deli or Hispanic/Spanish/Latin mini-mart in New York. They will normally be rescue cats; either rescued from the street where the store is or from a rescue centre. The term "bodega" appears to be exclusively used in New York City.

These are typical corner stores. Run independently and selling all manner of products from wine to delicatessen products. These are the sorts of shops we see all over the world. Not all of them have a live-in cat. That's obvious. The bodega cat is a very nice addition to the store. They go together nicely. It looks natural to me. And they serve a function beyond keeping the shop owner company. They keep the mice away.

In less well developed countries you could argue that the default situation regarding the domestic cat is the store cat or community cat. This is closer to the original relationship between man and cat: the barn cat keeping down rodents.

The term "bodega" comes from Spanish to mean a wine shop. The meaning has been expanded to include a mini-mart although in these stores wine, beers and spirits are an important part of the stock.

The cat in the picture is Snowball. A beautiful white bodega cat in NYC.

Delivery driver runs over kitten in driveway of property. Who is at fault?

A woman is in the process of receiving a delivery of groceries having ordered them online. The supermarket vehicle is parked up in the driveway and the goods are being offloaded. The woman lets her cats go outside. This is the UK. One of her cats is a 7-month-old kitten. She does not know where he is.

As she knows he could be outside she asks the delivery driver to move off slowly after the delivery has been fully offloaded. The idea is to give the kitten warning that the vehicle is moving. The driver does not carry out her instructions and drives off quickly. The kitten is crushed by one of the wheels. The kitten must have been very near the wheel when the vehicle moved off.

The woman is naturally distraught. The supermarket apologised, gave her flowers and £100. The woman is still upset and feels aggrieved. She is complaining to the company.



Who is at fault? It is not all on one side. I'd say the woman is equally at fault as the driver. She may have to bear the burden of most of the fault in my view. She knew the van was there. She knew her kitten could have been there. A tragic accident was forseable. She did not do enough to prevent it. The better solution would have been to either keep her cats inside when the delivery was being made or to inspect under the vehicle before it was driven off.

How do cats know when we are coming home?

This page has been moved and added to because I believe that Google will end Blogger in the not too distant future.

PLEASE THEREFORE CLICK ON THIS LINK TO READ MY OPINION ON WHY CATS KNOW WHEN YOU ARE COMING HOME.