Cat Lovers: Nature Works

sevenoneeighty

I love seeing cats in Bodegas for this very reason. Cats are amazing natural hunters. Hopefully the Deli owners do take good care of the cats like any owner would.

MTA might want to try this instead of poisons, etc.
There is obviously no safe way to release cats in to the subway system without endangering them and you dont want to start a Cat crisis instead of a rodent one ( A recent Problem in Fairfax, Va had wild cats roaming the woods near George Mason University). But it would be a surefire way to get rid of a big part of the NYC rodent problem,

The cats should be "fixed" to prevent unwanted breeding also.
I always remember my favorite cat behaving so proudly whenever he caught a bird and dropped it in front of me as if to say" look what I've brought you". When I got over being shocked at the sign of a dead bird in my living room and being sad for the bird, I realized he was just doing what he does best - hunt critters.

Its amazing how we manage to complicate things.
Yes, cats can transfer disease and bacteria - but so can rats and the bike messenger next to you on the elevator. Have you been non the subway lately?

The city would rather fine the bodega owners for having a cat rather than NOT having rats or mice. They would rather bring in an exterminator an spray harmful chemicals that ultimately do more to annoy the owners and customers than the rats and probably cause unknown damage to humans and food anyway.

It would seem smarter to set up a Municipal "Bodega/ Merchant Cat Department" (it could be a part of DEP or use the current inspectors) to regulate the health and well being of the cats rather than using government time and money to continuously harass the owners for using the most effective, balanced measure in nature to kill vermin.

Surely we can figure this one out.
We went to the moon for goodness sake. How hard is this?
Nature Works

Worrying over cat hair and cat allergies?
Get a tolerance or shop at another Bodega - you are in the minority - get over it. Seriously, as if cat dander is the number 1 problem in new york bodegas.

Christ.

Seriously, we've gotta stop being Pussies.
(no pun intended)

To Dismay of Inspectors, Prowling Cats Keep Rodents on the Run at City Delis

Richard Perry/The New York Times


Holly scares the rodents away at home, a deli in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Article Tools Sponsored By
By KATE HAMMER
Published: December 21, 2007

Across the city, delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Amid the goods found in the stores, there is one thing that many owners and employees say they cannot do without: their cats. And it goes beyond cuddly companionship. These cats are workers, tireless and enthusiastic hunters of unwanted vermin, and they typically do a far better job than exterminators and poisons.

When a bodega cat is on the prowl, workers say, rats and mice vanish.

That is the case at a narrow corner store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where a gray long-haired tabby named Halloween goes on regular patrols when she is not lounging on a plaid bed tucked behind dusty rows of Schweppes ginger ale and empty cardboard boxes.

“In the morning she is lazy, it is her nap time,” said Urszula Jawor, 49, the deli’s manager, a Polish immigrant who smiled with motherly pride at Halloween, adding that the cat was named for the day she wandered in off the street and claimed the Bedford Avenue store as her home.

“But in the afternoon she is busy,” Ms. Jawor said. “She spends hours stalking the mice and the rats.”

To store owners, the services of cats are indispensable in a city where the rodent problem is serious enough to be documented in a still popular two-minute video clip on YouTube from late February (youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws) of rats running amok in a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village. Store-dwelling cats are so common that there is a Web site, workingclasscats.com, dedicated to telling their tales.

But as efficient as the cats may be, their presence in stores can lead to legal trouble. The city’s health code and state law forbid animals in places where food or beverages are sold for human consumption. Fines range from $300 for a first offense to $2,000 or higher for subsequent offenses.

“Any animal around food presents a food contamination threat,” said Robert M. Corrigan, a rodentologist and research scientist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “And so that means anything from animal pieces and parts to hair and excrement could end up in food, and that alone, of course, is a violation of the health code.”

Mr. Corrigan did concede that some studies have shown that the smell of cats in an enclosed area will keep mice away. But he does not endorse cats as a form of pest control because, he explained, the bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites and nematodes carried by rats may infect humans by secondary transfer through a cat.

Still, many store owners keep cats despite the law, mainly because other options have failed and the fine for rodent feces is also $300. “It’s hard for bodega owners because they’re not supposed to have a cat, but they’re also not supposed to have rats,” said José Fernández, the president of the Bodega Association of the United States.

Luis Martinez, 42, has managed his brother’s grocery in East New York, Brooklyn, for two years. At first, despite weekly visits from an exterminator, the store’s inventory was ravaged constantly by nibbling vermin.

“Every night I had to put the bread in the freezer,” he said, pointing at shelves filled with bread and hamburger buns. “I was losing too much inventory. The chips and the Lipton soups all had holes in them.”

Then, last winter, a friend brought Mr. Martinez a marmalade kitten in need of a home. Mr. Martinez, who was skeptical of how one slinky kitten could fend off an army of hungry rats, set up a litter box in the back of the store, put down an old fleece jacket and named the kitten Junior.

Within two weeks, Mr. Martinez said, “a miracle.”

“Before you’d see giant rats running in off the streets into the store, but since Junior, no more,” he said.

Junior sometimes brings Mr. Martinez mouse carcasses as gifts, which he said bothers him less than the smell that permeates his store when the exterminator’s victims die and rot under a freezer.

In October, a health inspector fined Mr. Martinez $300 and warned him that if Junior was still there by the time of the next inspection he would be fined $2,000.

“He wants me to get rid of the cat, but the rats will take over if I do,” Mr. Martinez said. “I need the cat, and the cat needs a home.”

Because stores do not get advance notification of an inspection, Mr. Martinez is trying to keep Junior in his office as much as possible. Many bodega owners reason that a cat is less of a health threat than an army of nibbling rats. “If cats live in homes and apartments where people have food, a cat shouldn’t be a threat in a store if it’s well maintained,” Mr. Fernández said.

Some animal rescue groups, like the Spay and Neuter Intervention Project, support the legalization and regulation of store cats so that owners would be required to provide basic veterinary care and to spay or neuter their animals.

At a corner store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Andre Duran, one of the owners, said he had kept a cat for six years and had never been fined.

“That’s Oreo,” he said, as he lifted a tiny black cat with white paws into his arms and carried her like a football. “No one’s ever complained about cat hair in their sandwiches, and if she weren’t here, you bet there’d be bigger problems than hair.”

As a line formed at Mr. Duran’s cash register and he excused himself to take orders, Oreo’s ears perked up and she slunk away toward the back of the store. She was, perhaps, in pursuit of something.

carnivore

I think we should release cane toads into the subway system.

lilbangladesh

I think I would prefer that than cats in the subway.

Cats in bodegas don't bother me, because yeah, they get rid of vermin. Shops with cats seem to be much cleaner than those without. Just saying.

sevenoneeighty

Yea, I know cats in the subway is over the top - but it WOULD work at getting rid of the rats better than anything else to date.

I was at Atlantic Avenue and there was a rat party going on down there on the tracks. It seems like there is nothing that can be done about it - that works that is.

lilbangladesh

I really don't want to see kitties down there. For one thing, those rats are HUGE, some of them bigger than cats. With all the trains about, it would be super dangerous for the cats, AND I'd worry about introducing another disease vector down there. If the rats are rabid, the cats could get rabies from them (from bites, those rats are MEAN) and it would make it easier to transmit rabies to humans (which is almost always 100% fatal) since we know better not to touch rats or mice, but how are you going to be able to stop kids from trying to touch the kitties? It's just NOT a good idea.

sevenoneeighty

Yea, I know - it was said more 'tongue in cheek' and not expected to be taken seriously.

But don't underestimate cats like the article stated, even the smallest of cats are viscous killers and don't let their size fool you - they can handle themselves just fine...

caseopele

I completely agree, I'll take a cat over chemicals and rats any day. And cats living in the subways is not unheard of. When I lived in Kensington there was a cat living under the platform at the Church Ave stop. It stayed on the rarely used side and someone fed it. Apparently it had kittens but I don't know what happened to them. This was about 10 years ago. A few cats have been seen in the subways before.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E0D8113CF934A1575BC0A9649C8B63

1904 article!
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9901EFD61230E132A25757C2A9669D946597D6CF

sevenoneeighty

Re: 1904 Article:

"Nig" the black subway cat...."who is as black as ink"...
Boy, how times have changed.

caseopele

Holy crap, I was so focused on finding those articles that I didn't even notice that. Pretty much ruins the story, how disgusting. Sorry guys. :oops:

lilbangladesh

Well, if you are going to use these cats as rat patrol, feeding them is a bad idea because it removes the incentive to hunt.

My cat used to be an excellent mouser when he was feral, but he decided to tame himself because it was easier to be fed for being cute. When he first came to my apartment, the mice just disappeared (they ignored my other cat), but the last time he was confronted with a mouse, twelve years later, he ran away from it!

I think mousing is one of those "use it or lose it" skills.

opossumqueen

My folks' once wild barn cat has gotten fat on cat food but almost everyday she still leaves a mangled body at the back door, usually a mouse and recently a rabbit. She was still eating on the rabbit when my Dad opened the door! This was not one of those wild city rabbits as they live far from here in the country.

She's so fat she looks like two cats but she always follows my dad out when he gets out the tractor or whatever to mow a field, which makes for easy hunting.

As for animals in shops, just seeing a cat or dog in a shop makes me want to go in. I prefer a little animal hair over mouse/rat hair and droppings.

lilbangladesh

You got that. And I'm allergic to cats. I can desensitize to cats I'm around all the time (which is why I can own them) but the desensitizing process isn't fun. Still, so long as I don't touch a cat I don't know, I'm usually ok.

Still, I'd rather deal with a few sniffles than the health hazards of rodents.