Vids we love: nyc’s bodega cats in their own words

Last year, I claimed that bodega cats are “the urban world’s most magnificent beast.” This is without doubt the truest claim ever published on Catster — and the folks over at WNYC, New York City’s NPR outpost, clearly agree, as earlier this year they held an Instagram-enabled competition to find the city’s finest specimen.

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Now they’ve revisited the competition’s most notable contestants and presented each cat’s story in a short documentary format.

First up is Carmel, a two-month-old kitten who skitters around the aisles of a beer-stocked deli in the historically Polish neighborhood of Ridgewood. (She quips that she can feast on all the food in the store except the brews.)

Next, the series heads over to Park Slope in Brooklyn, where the uninspiringly named Sheeba and Victoria suffer a life that plays out like a real life version of Portlandia on steroids and Xanax. (Spoiler: The hardship of entitlement ensues.)

Finally, the best in the first batch of the series is set on the Upper West Side and stars Oliver, so named because he was an orphan found living in a nearby schoolyard.

Oliver loves nothing more than to nestle in among the produce outside his bodega, where he lounges and spies on passing customers. That is, until his owner sprays him with water to keep him out of the merchandise. Oliver also claims to have a healthy disdain for oversized strollers — which presumably means he’s not planning a day trip to Sheeba and Victoria’s deli anytime soon.

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More bodega cat videos are promised — although the series is also a fine excuse to revisit perhaps the greatest bodega cat mockumentary of all:

Laugh with us:

• Texts from Mittens: The Evil Chipmunk Edition
• 5 Ways My Cats Interrupt My Precious Sleep
• Why Does My Cat Always Use the Litter Box Right After I’ve Cleaned It?

About Phillip Mlynar: The self-appointed world’s foremost expert on rappers’ cats. When not penning posts on rap music, he can be found building DIY cat towers for his adopted domestic shorthair, Mimosa, and collecting Le Creuset cookware (in red). He has also invented cat sushi, but it’s not quite what you think it is.