Miercoles takes the oath, vetoes a hat, and signals every vote by choosing which documents to occupy
Bodega Cat Elected to Community Board After Running Unopposed on Platform of Sitting on Things
NEW YORK – A seven-year-old orange tabby named Miércoles was sworn in Tuesday as the newest member of a Brooklyn community board, becoming the first bodega cat to hold formal municipal office after running unopposed on a platform his campaign literature summarized as “I will sit on it,” a promise supporters note he has kept since before taking office.
Miércoles, who has presided over the deli case at Torres Grocery on Knickerbocker Avenue since 2019, was nominated by neighborhood petition after residents concluded he was the only public figure in the district with a perfect attendance record, universal name recognition, and no known real estate holdings.
The Campaign
The draft-Miércoles movement began last spring, when the board’s long-contested seat opened and the neighborhood surveyed its options. “We looked at the field,” said campaign organizer Yolanda Reyes, 56, a retired teacher. “One candidate wanted to rezone the block for a tower. One candidate does not live here. One candidate is the tower guy’s cousin. Meanwhile Miércoles has spent six years at the exact center of this community, listening to every complaint in two languages, keeping the mice out of the rice, and asking for nothing but the warm spot on the lottery machine. The choice made itself.”
The campaign’s sole rally, held on the sidewalk outside the bodega, drew 300 residents, 40 of whom brought their own cats in solidarity. The candidate slept through his nominating speech, an act his campaign framed as “a rejection of political theater” and his opponents, had any existed, would have struggled to counter, because he looked extremely comfortable.
Governing Style
Two weeks into his term, board observers describe a distinctive approach. Miércoles attends every session, carried in by a rotating honor guard of neighborhood kids, and takes his seat atop whatever document is most consequential, a habit the board secretary initially fought and now exploits, reporting that “you can tell what matters this month by where he sits. Last week he sat on the developer’s traffic study for two hours. The week before, he sat on the budget. He has never once sat on the minutes. He knows.”
His legislative record is, by volume, modest, and by outcome, notable. A contentious sidewalk shed proposal stalled after Miércoles occupied the renderings through the entire presentation, and a debate over a curb cut, previously in its fourteenth month, resolved in forty minutes, which longtime members attribute to a new spirit of humility in the room. “It is difficult to grandstand in front of a cat,” explained board veteran Harold Feingold, 71. “He looks at you. You hear your own voice. You yield your remaining time. The efficiency gains are enormous.”
Coverage of the swearing-in ran citywide, with a photo essay at Gothamist documenting the ceremony, at which Miércoles was administered a modified oath, touched his paw to the city charter, and received, in lieu of a lapel pin, a small hat that he immediately removed, “his first veto,” per the caption, and civic analysis at THE CITY examining the legal basis of feline board membership and concluding, after a review of the charter, “there is, incredibly, nothing on point.”
The Bodega Cat Question
The election has energized the city’s estimated 10,000-strong bodega cat workforce, whose legal status has long occupied a gray zone: beloved by all, technically prohibited from food establishments, and enforced against by no inspector willing to survive the neighborhood’s response. A study by the Urban Animal Governance Project found bodega cats provide the city an estimated $40 million annually in pest control, security presence, and what the study terms “ambient emotional infrastructure,” calculated from survey data showing 84 percent of New Yorkers rate a bodega with a cat as “significantly more trustworthy,” and 61 percent as “the only institution I fully trust.”
City Hall has responded cautiously, with a spokesperson stating the administration “congratulates the new member and is reviewing the precedent,” a review insiders say is motivated less by legal concerns than by internal polling showing Miércoles with an approval rating of 96 percent, a figure no elected official in city history has approached, “including fictional ones.”
The tabloids have adopted him outright, the New York Post running a full back-page treatment under the headline PURR-FECT UNION, while international satirical outlets took note, with The London Prat observing that Britain’s own tradition of cats in government “has operated unofficially at Downing Street for decades, with the cats consistently outperforming the residents,” and the civic desk at Bohiney Magazine ranking Miércoles first in its annual list of American officials “most likely to be doing this for the right reasons.”
The Road Ahead
Asked about higher office, campaign organizer Reyes was firm. “People keep saying borough president, mayor, senator,” she said. “But Miércoles is not leaving the bodega. That is the whole point. The bodega is the district office. Constituent services run from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days. You come in, you say your problem out loud while you get your coffee, and he listens. Half of politics is showing up and listening. He does the whole half.”
As of press time, Miércoles was at his post, midway down the counter, one eye open, seated with intent atop a freshly delivered stack of rezoning notices, which, under board precedent now three weeks old, means everyone in the neighborhood already knows how the vote will go.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/