It rained sideways on Tuesday, the kind of rain that laughs at your umbrella and ruins your shoes personally. I got off the F at Delancey and immediately regretted every choice that led me to the Lower East Side that day.
I ducked into a bodega on Rivington to wait it out. And that's where I met him.
The bodega cat. Enormous, orange, sprawled across a shelf of chips like he paid rent, which spiritually he probably does. The uncle at the counter told me his name was Samosa. I nearly wept from joy.
A rainy Tuesday on the Lower East Side is not usually a redemption story. But Samosa let me pet him, deigned to blink slowly at me, and then went back to sleep, entirely unbothered by my emotional needs. Very New York of him.
I bought a chai and a bag of chips I didn't need, mostly as rent to the cat. The uncle and I watched the rain together in that comfortable bodega silence that this city does so well. No small talk required.
Bodega cats are one of the great unspoken infrastructure systems of New York. They hold neighborhoods together. Samosa was clearly the emotional support animal for all of Rivington Street.
By the time the rain thinned out, my mood had completely turned. A rainy Tuesday on the Lower East Side had somehow become one of the nicer afternoons of my week, and I owe it entirely to a cat who couldn't care less about me.
That's the thing about this city. It kicks you and then hands you a bodega cat named Samosa to make it right.
I walked to work slightly damp and completely fine. Sometimes fine is a whole victory.
Find your bodega cat. Let it ignore you back to happiness.
Love,