Tiger

Tiger's spot is the front window.

Chiku has made the ledge feel less like a piece of store furniture and more like a small room for one cat. There is a gray bed, a purple toy mouse, a couple of plants, and a small orange tiger figurine set behind him, facing the same glass.

Tiger's window, Williamsburg. Photos: Gulce Kilkis / Bodega Cats of New York

Tiger works out of a bodega in Williamsburg. He is the Scottish fold with the round face, folded ears, and a look like he has already heard your question and decided not to answer it.

We shot something with him once for the news, and that was the part everyone kept circling back to: Tiger makes people slow down. Customers come in from the sidewalk, see him in the window, and take a minute before going back to whatever they were doing.

Chiku describes him the same way. Tiger sits there, takes pets, lives for rubs, and lets the store move around him. He looks like he owns the place because everyone treats him like he does.

He was not brought in to be famous. Chiku brought him in because there were mice, but Tiger did not really solve that problem. The store still needed exterminators, and Tiger became something else instead: the cat in the window, the cat people came in to see, the cat with a little tiger behind him on the ledge.

Tiger inside the store, Williamsburg. Photos: Gulce Kilkis / Bodega Cats of New York

When we filmed him, Chiku joked that Tiger keeps an eye on the store. In the morning, he would find Tiger sitting there like he had been on night management, checking that everything was okay.

Pumpkin, the other cat on the account, is down the street at Berry. Same owner, different store, and a different routine. Pumpkin has the candy shelf. Tiger has the window.

People talk about them together without mixing them up. They are not doing the same job. They are just settled into their own corners of the neighborhood, familiar enough that regulars know which cat belongs to which store.

Tiger sits behind the glass with his bed, his toy mouse, and the little tiger on the ledge behind him.