The bodega cat is one of those SF fixtures that residents know how to find and visitors often ask about — sometimes with a book in hand, apparently. A recent thread on r/sanfrancisco drew a family in from Dublin, seven-year-old primed and ready, wanting to make a proper visit of it before a Giants game. The replies came in fast: Haight Street, the Mission, the Tenderloin, the Sunset. People tagging specific corners, specific animals, specific hours when the cat is most likely to be awake and visible and not wedged behind a shelf of canned goods.

The stores that keep cats tend to be the ones that have been on a block long enough to become part of its grammar — the place you stop for a paper or a Gatorade or an avocado at 10pm because nothing else is open. The cat is incidental to the commerce and central to the relationship. You remember which store has the cat. You tell people about it.

What's worth noting is how quickly the thread filled up with current, specific information — not nostalgia for stores that had closed, but actual live intelligence about where the cats are right now, which ones are friendly, which ones prefer to observe from a distance. The neighborhood knowledge is intact. It's just distributed across people who thought to write it down.

Anyone walking into a well-stocked corner store in the Mission or the Inner Sunset tomorrow should look low — near the base of the refrigerator cases, or just inside the door on a folded piece of cardboard — before they look anywhere else.