Mishu

Customers adore her enough to stop mid-errand, crouch down on the tile, and forget their coffee order.

Mishu spends much of her time near the front of the bodega. A worker told us she likes people who approach calmly and is wary of dogs. After five or six years in the store, her routine is familiar to the staff.

She gives dogs no such welcome.

The worker told us this while juggling everything at once: filling Grubhub orders, ringing up customers, taking a phone call, restocking shelves. We were following him around the store, trying to get quotes in the gaps between transactions. As a true New Yorker, he was doing his job first and squeezing in answers between customers.

"She loves people," he said. "Just not dogs. She warns them. They don't listen. She warns them again."

One dog did not take the hint. Tried to play with her. Moved too close. Kept sniffing, kept pushing, thinking Mishu was playing back.

She wasn't.

Mishu gave two quick, precise swats. The dog finally understood.

"This is her territory," the worker said. "She's not aggressive. She just has rules."

When customers gather, she sometimes drifts toward them. When the aisles are quiet, she roams at her own pace and settles beneath the shelves.

Behind her, the grill guy works through the lunch chopped cheese rush, the smell drifting toward the front. Mishu barely looks up.

Workers said they move her downstairs when a health inspector arrives.

"She knows the drill," one worker said. "When they do come, we bring her downstairs. So she's nowhere up here when they come."

While we photographed her, cooks came out from the kitchen. They passed around sample prints and compared the angles while I handed out stickers.

Mishu did not react to any of it. She sat nearby, flicking her tail.