Zorro

I heard about Zorro before I met her. Ruben told us the story while we stood at the counter trying to get a clean shot of the tortie stretched out on a cardboard bed over the radiator.

"You know about the health inspector?" he said.

We did not.

The inspector had come through for a routine check. Looked over the counters, the prep area, the storage. Everything spotless. A-grade clean.

As the inspector headed toward the door, he walked past Zorro. She reached up from her radiator perch and swatted his arm.

Ruben paused there, letting the image sit: a health inspector bleeding in front of a cat who legally should not be there.

"What happened?" I asked.

"He looked at me. Looked at the cat. Nodded. Walked out."

No citation. No warning. No note in the report. Nothing.

"Nothing?" I said.

"Nothing," Ruben repeated. "He was annoyed. You could tell. But he didn't write anything down."

While we worked, Zorro barely moved. She blinked slowly, adjusted her position, glanced at us like we were temporary inconveniences in her space. She stayed where she wanted to be. The box was hers. Not officially. Nothing in a bodega is ever officially assigned to the cat. But everyone knew it. The cardboard sat tucked against the wall below the hanging bags, and Zorro had turned it into a desk, bed, and lookout post.

Ruben laughed every time he retold the swat. "The cat doesn't know the rules," he said. "The cat just knows the door."

Bodega Cats of New York comes out this fall.