Sixty Bodega Cats, Documented Across Five Boroughs
Dan Rimada's book records 60 New York bodega cats in 120 photographs by Gülce Kılkış, and argues for legal protection and regular veterinary care.
"Bodega Cats of New York" gathers 60 cats from all five boroughs into 120 photographs, shot by Gülce Kılkış for a project led by Dan Rimada. The book is not only an album. It carries a request: legal recognition for these animals and consistent veterinary care, in a city where keeping a cat in a food shop technically breaks health code while the cat quietly handles rodent control.
The method is what turns affection into argument. Naming sixty animals and mapping them borough by borough makes a scattered phenomenon countable, which a stream of individual cat pictures never does. Istanbul knows the other half of this problem. Street cats there are already part of the city's self-image, popularised by Ceyda Torun's 2016 documentary, yet neutering, vaccination and shelter capacity never scaled with that visibility. Shopkeeper care stays informal on both sides of the Atlantic.
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- Colossal · 6 August 2026
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Illustrative image · Photo: Tahir Osman / Pexels — free licence
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