Why Some Bodega Cats Take Four Weeks to Photograph

Fat Choy has been running from us for a month.

Every time Gulce and I show up at her Chinatown spot, she vanishes. Into the back. Behind the shelves. Once we waited twenty minutes while the owner's mom rang up customers and we paced the aisles pretending to browse. Fat Choy never came out. The owner texted her daughter to bring the cat. Still nothing.

Weeks of this. Owners too slammed to talk. Cats who sprint the moment they see a camera.

The logistics sound simple: walk in, explain the work, take photos, get a signature on a property release so the publisher can use the images. The reality is messier. A property release is a piece of paper that says we have permission to photograph on private property. Most owners have never seen one. When you hand someone a form in their own store, the mood shifts.

Suliman runs a Bronx bodega with a mixed Himalayan named Tony. Tony likes to climb into the refrigerator when customers open the door and nap there for an hour during summer. Suliman was friendly, showed us Tony, talked about how long he had owned him. Then I handed over the release.

He read it carefully. Asked a few questions. Signed it.

Afterward, in the car, I told Gulce I had been nervous. That would have been a loss. Tony sleeping in a fridge is exactly the kind of detail that belongs in the book.

Owners hesitate for good reason. They could be signing away their bodega to us, for all they know. They run small businesses. They do not have time for surprises. One owner, after a New York Times piece mentioned bodega cats, told me he got a warning from the health department. Somebody read the article and called it in.

Some days the manager is not there. At one Hell's Kitchen bodega, the worker told me he could not sign anything. He only works Sundays. The managers come on Monday. We left without a release. That cat, Tommy, has two different colored eyes. He would have been a good one.

Other days, owners light up. Cookie's owner Mike signed immediately. When I explained the release, he said, "That's it? No money or nothing?" He thought there would be a catch. There was not. We left him stickers and told him we would mail a copy of the book when it comes out.

When the book comes out, I will send you a copy. Gratis. I have said that line dozens of times in English and Spanish. It moves people from suspicious to willing. We are not disappearing with their image. We are coming back.

Coca, a cat in the Bronx, met the mayor. Her owner told us that within thirty seconds of walking in. She is less than a year old. The owner signed the release before we finished explaining it. Por supuesto, todo lo que quieras.

Pantera's owner was slammed. Could not talk. But when I asked about the cat, he still had pride in his voice. Pantera, like a panther. That was all he said.

Fat Choy, still uncaptured. Tiger, who I got one photo of, sprinting away. Cats who hide downstairs or in the back, owners who say maybe later, stores where the timing never lines up.

Then Suliman showing us Tony in the fridge. Mike asking if that was really it. The owner who said her cat brought her luck. The workers who asked where to put the stickers we left behind.

Four years of this. Hundreds of visits.

Bodega Cats of New York comes out this fall.