Ep 668: City Kitties: Inside New York's Bodega Cat Movement, with Dan Rimada, Founder of Bodega Cats of New York and Co-Founder of Cats About Town Tours
About this episode
Dan Rimada discusses the Bodega Cat movement in New York City and the advocacy efforts surrounding it.
"You can both celebrate them and advocate for them at the same time." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund , OcuTrap , and Drop Traps: Beginning and Advanced Certification Workshop . Dan Rimada didn't set out to start a movement. He just started noticing cats. During the stillness of COVID, when New York City slowed down enough to actually look around, he began noticing the cats living in the bodegas of his Fort Greene, Brooklyn neighborhood and photographing them on his iPhone. What began as a hyper-local Instagram project quickly grew into something much larger — a citywide archive, an advocacy platform, a walking tour company, and now a forthcoming book. Today, Bodega Cats of New York is the most detailed documentation of working cats in New York City corner stores ever assembled, built on four years of relationship-building across all five boroughs. At the heart of Dan's work is a real tension: bodega cats are beloved New York City cultural icons — neighborhood anchors, pest controllers, familiar faces — and they are technically illegal. Under current New York City Health Code, keeping a live animal in a food establishment can result in fines between $200 and…
People in this episode
Guest: Dan Rimada
Sponsors
Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, Drop Traps: Beginning and Advanced Certification Workshop
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Bodega Cats of New York, Cats About Town Tours
Places: New York City, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
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