Big news. Huge. The bodega cat on Nostrand Avenue looked at me on purpose.
For those just joining my life: there is a grey tabby who lives in the bodega near the Nostrand Ave stop on the 3 train. He sleeps on the stack of newspapers nobody buys. He has never, in three years of my patronage, given me the time of day.
I have earned his contempt honestly. I come in at odd hours. I agonize over the chip selection. I once asked the guy behind the counter if they had paneer and he looked at me like I'd asked for the moon.
But last night — chopped cheese run, 11pm, the kind of hunger that is mostly loneliness wearing a trench coat — the bodega cat raised his head. Looked at me. Flicked his tail. And went back to sleep.
That tail flick? That was love. I know it was.
The thing about the bodega cat is that he's the closest thing to a neighborhood pet I have. My building doesn't allow animals. My mom keeps asking when I'll have something to take care of besides my houseplants, which, fair, two of them died this summer.
So the bodega cat on Nostrand Avenue is my emotional support animal by proxy. He doesn't know this. He wouldn't care.
I told the counter guy about the tail flick like it was front-page news. He said, "Yeah, he does that to regulars." A REGULAR. Me. After three years I am a regular.
In Ahmedabad everyone knew my grandmother's whole family at the vegetable market. Here, being known by a bodega cat feels like the New York version of that. Small. Earned. Mine.
Small belonging counts. Even when it has whiskers and doesn't care if you live or die.
Love,