A working class cat is a fine thing to be (be bop)

An article in today's New York Times chronicled the phenomenon of bodega cats, the blue-collar felines who keep their shops free of vermin. As anyone who's lived or worked in a large city knows, where there's food, there's inevitably a rodent, so a good mouser is worth his or her weight in gold. And when compared to the cost and inconvenience of exterminators, the investment in kitty litter, veterinary care and some canned food is minimal. Felix comes in, rats disappear. It's that simple.

The New York Department of Health feels otherwise. Apparently, where they're concerned, having a cat in a corner market or a restaurant is as bad as having rats. Fines for having any kind of animal range from $300 to $2000 or more.

I can understand some of the reluctance to have a free-range cat in a restaurant kitchen or behind the deli counter, but the bodega issue doesn't make sense to me. The equations are simple:

Food = rats, inevitably

Food + exterminators = rats that crawl off and die in inconvenient places

The question isn't whether there are rats, it's where are they and how long will it take them to return between pest control visits. No matter what you do, they're a fact of life for anyone who runs a food establishment in New York.

So the choices seem to be:

1. Ban the cats and constantly deal with rats gnawing at food packages and leaving God knows what around to spread disease.
2. Let the cats do what comes naturally.

Anyone who's seen the video of the Greenwich Village Taco Bell rat infestation knows the answer. There, the rats looked about as big as cats and scurried around freely after the store closed for the night. One might wonder what three or four felines would have been able to accomplish there. Fast food franchisees might even want to consider rotating crews of cats to patrol their stores once a week or so.

I don' t know about you, but given the option of seeing a cat in a restaurant, or a mouse, I'll always choose Morris over Mickey. So maybe the Department of Health can come up with a compromise: let the cats stay, but require them to be tested on a regular basis for the disease and parasites rats carry. Their inspectors can check the cat's health records when they come to rate the establishment. And perhaps it will get a few more homeless animals out of the shelters and off the streets.