Oh dear, some people just don’t get it. Complaining about bodega cats is about as “New York” as wearing an I ❤ NY T-shirt. You just don’t do it.
A Yelp user named Diane D stirred up a torrent of hate when her negative review of SK Deli Market, on Second Avenue in the East Village, focused on Star, the bodega’s cat.
how miserable of a person do you have to be to leave yelp reviews of bodegas complaining about bodega cats pic.twitter.com/7WwCk6spye
— FLAIL WALDORF (@kornyazngurl) October 23, 2016
She slammed the poor kitty saying:
“there was a cat, perched upon some cases of Budweiser in the middle of the store!! Besides being allergic to cats, I wonder the health code says about this?”
As you can imagine. Social media didn’t react well to reading Diane’s opinion. She obviously forgot that not only are bodega cats revered in NYC, the internet worships cats in a way that makes the ancient Egyptians look like amateurs.
Yelp users inundated the site with positive reviews of the establishment and it’s feline worker, so much so Diane deleted her post and Yelp released this message on the bodegas page:
So much furor has been created by the review, one New Yorker has even taken it upon himself to petition Mayor de Blasio to legalize cats in bodegas:
His petition reads:
As a long time New Yorker i grew up seeing cats inside of bodegas. I would like to see it made legal to have cats in a bodega in New York city. Cats keep rodents out of food products and keep other pests at bay. You don’t want to see fecal matter from rodents in a bodega right? I don’t either.
Cats are an inseparable part of NYC retail culture (Tumblr and Instagram) and even though they violate of city health codes, New Yorkers seem to be united in their desire to keep them around.
Featured image source [tumblr]