This employee has earned her stripes.<\/p>\n
Eleven-year-old cat Georgie has been working diligently at Lower East Side vegan shoe store MooShoes for nearly a decade, according to store owner Erika Kubersky \u2014 who rescued the tabby from Big Apple streets and has since tasked her with greeting and lap-warming customers.<\/p>\n
The rotund orange-and-white staffer also serves as the sole surviving feline from a newly expanded book documenting the lives of hardworking kitties around New York City.<\/p>\n
Eleven-year-old Georgie embraces \u201cShop Cats of New York\u201d author Tamar Arslanian at MooShoes in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
\u201cShop Cats of New York\u201d features dozens of cats like Georgie \u2014 now adopted into storefronts as mouse catchers, fluffy advertisements or in-house therapists \u2014 working at bookstores, pharmacies, record shops, art studios, vet centers and even fire stations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a customer comes in, she\u2019ll decide to lap-warm people,\u201d Kubersky told The Post of Georgie\u2019s daily responsibilities, adding neighbors will often stop inside just to say hello to the shoe store mascot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a customer comes in, she\u2019ll decide to lap-warm people,\u201d Kubersky told The Post of Georgie\u2019s daily responsibilities, adding neighbors will often stop inside just to say hello to the shoe store mascot. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s not cuddling up to a customer, Georgie can often be found sitting on her pink \u201cthrone\u201d by the cash register \u2014 filled with plush toys aplenty gifted from her fans, of which she touts more than 16,000 on TikTok alone.<\/p>\n
Georgie\u2019s nights spent alone inside the store is no cat-astrophe, Kubersky added, as \u201cshe gets so much attention during the days \u2014 my cats [at home] just see me for dinner and to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such is the argument for the newly revised \u201cShop Cats of New York,\u201d in which author and cat blogger Tamar Arslanian argues that responsible shop cat ownership provides much-needed homes to felines with more social needs than traditional house pets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of rescues that will not adopt out to stores, but the shop cats get all this stimulation from other people,\u201d Arslanian told The Post.\u00a0\u201cFor me, the most eye-opening part of the project was going into it feeling a little bad for them, but then learning they have it better than my own home cats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Myers of Keswick\u2019s shop cat Grace has her own merchandise displayed at the West Village store. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
Some shops, like The Compleat Sculptor in Chelsea, have a vet come to the location to regularly check on cats, like cross-eyed 9-year-old Ralphie.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have the right personality,\u201d Compleat Sculptor owner Marc Fields said of shop cats, adding he found the \u201cright fit\u201d in bow-tied Ralphie, whose sole responsibility is affectionately welcoming scores of artists who enter the cavernous 27,000-square-foot warehouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe move stone on pallets with machines, and he\u2019s like, \u2018What\u2019s up, dude?\u2019\u201d\u00a0Fields said of the unfazed gentleman.<\/p>\n
Other shops, like Myers of Keswick, keep a \u201cfamily calendar\u201d of appointments for 4-year-old Grace, who is routinely employee of the month for hunting mice at the British goods store.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/strong>She makes sure there are no visitors, that\u2019s why we have an A [health rating],\u201d <\/strong>owner Jennifer Pulidori said.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, it\u2019s such a unique and integral part of the city,\u201d Arslanian said of shop cats \u2014 some of whom, like Grace and C.O. Bigelow\u2019s now-deceased Allegra, have even earned their own merchandise.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re everywhere, but not everyone notices them,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re a soft underbelly of the city. They just bring such warmth to each shop, they have their own fan base and they create their own little communities.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a weird way, it makes the city smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n Tamar Arslanian and shop cat Ralphie at The Compleat Sculptor in Chelsea, Manhattan. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n The book\u2019s first edition, published in 2016, rocketed both Arslanian and photographer Andrew Marttila to fame among cat lovers, but quietly went out of print after the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 and the pair decided to reinvigorate the quirky Big Apple-centric anthology last year. The new edition will hit the shelves Sept. 9.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had this interest to have it reprinted by another publishing house as-is, but as we started to go back pitching this idea, we decided to do a revised version \u2014 it would be kind of weird to put out of a book that\u2019s just the history of shop cats of New York \u2026 since most of those cats [in the first edition] have since passed,\u201d Martilla said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The expansion was shot over a week-long period last year, Martilla said, and features 20 new shop cats (and more than two dozen from the first edition) showcasing their distinct personalities.<\/p>\n \u201cMy methods are grounded in patience and understanding and being calm: I go into the situation and I befriend the cats, first and foremost,\u201d Martilla said. <\/p>\n \u201cI let the cats be themselves. The best pictures of animals are when they\u2019re comfortable \u2014 and most of the animals in New York are used to people being around all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Shop cat Ralphie rests inside his home at The Compleat Sculptor. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n Ratty, of Casey Rubber Stamps in the East Village, was Martilla\u2019s favorite feline to photograph.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a photographer, I love this challenge of having to befriend this cat that might hate me,\u201d Martilla said of the calico. \u201cShe loved on me, rubbed on me, but also swatted at me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s friendly, just not affectionate,\u201d owner John Casey told The Post, adding Ratty was originally rescued to catch mice \u2014 \u201cexcept she doesn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHer name was Floria or some stupid flowery name, and I said, \u2018God no,\u2019\u201d Casey fondly recalled. \u201cShe\u2019s a runt! I\u2019m going to give her a runt name: I call her Ratty the Catty.\u201d<\/p>\n Shop cat Ratty at Casey\u2019s Rubber Stamps in the East Village. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n Ratty now greets passers-by daily from her window perch, from dog walkers to schoolchildren. Casey, meanwhile, is working on a custom stamp in Ratty\u2019s likeness for her local fans.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really cool, fun thing to go to New York City or live in New York City and befriend all the cats,\u201d Martilla added. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe not everyone has space in their apartment, but you can visit a shop down the street \u2014 and [those cats] always have a multitude of friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This employee has earned her stripes. Eleven-year-old cat Georgie has been working diligently at Lower East Side vegan…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":208749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,4653,6335,5249,5248,405,403,7619,5226,5225,5228,5227,7926,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-208748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cats","10":"tag-exclusive","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-metro","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-life","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-pets","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115165519172252782","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}