Social media purr-fection: NYC’s bodega cats spotlighted in hit TikTok show
She’s on the prowl.
Queens comedian MichellaDonna, nee Michelle Reiss, has become a TikTok sensation profiling NYC’s best bodega felines for her viral show Shop Cats.
On Tuesday, the 26-year-old Ridgewood native visited Midtown’s 24-hour bodega, Port Authority Food & Deli, to spotlight Oreo, a 5-year-old black and white kitty with piercing green eyes.
“I heard there was a juicy bodega cat in here — let’s go check it out!” MichellaDonna said for the camera, holding a mic and sporting winged black cat-eye liner and pony tail.
Oreo, who hails from Brooklyn and was a gift to bodega owner Sammy Faisal by a friend four years ago, has long been famous in the neighborhood.
“Some people come in just to see Oreo,” Asam Alhder, who runs Port Authority Food & Deli with Faisal, told The Post. “He lives like a king.”
Thanks to MichellaDonna — whose Mad Realities-produced show has 695,000 followers — he’ll soon have a wider fanbase when his episode goes up on social media later this month. MichellaDonna said he has a star quality.
“He’s a chunk-a-licious diva,” she told The Post, of the kitty who held court in a cardboard box in a storage room in the deli atop cans of Coors Light, Budweiser and 2-liter bottles of root beer before noshing on its tuna flavored cat food.
He also has six toes on each paw. MichellaDonna said the extra toes are common to “Hemingway Cats,” which hail from West Florida.
“Earnest Hemingway supposedly bought some land on Key West where he got the cats to have babies – those babies had a whole additional little [toe on their paw],” she explained.
The idea for the Shopcats show, which launched in September 2024, stemmed from a character MichellaDonna, an actress and comedian, developed on her own social media. She was looking to combine her love of cats with her passion for bacon egg and cheese sandwiches.
“I never really had a pet – every cat I saw in [bodegas and shops] growing up were my pet,” she said.
While MichellaDonna said all the cats she’s featured are “Pur-fect,” she does have some favorites.
Luna, a large Tuxedo cat with beige fur from NYC Flower Market in Chelsea, was one memorable feline.
“She was so silly. She would just look at me like, ‘why you laughing?” MichellaDonna said.
Another standout was Simba, a Crown Heights kitty that customers call the “Bergen Street protector.” The orange cat has a full figure that belies his love of popcorn.
“He’s a very stubborn cat, he starts crying that he wants snacks,” a customer explains in a Shop Cats episode that posted in March.
During each episode, MichellaDonna determines whether a cat is a “hunter or gatherer” dangling a string with a mouse to see if the kitty prays on it or stands back.
As befitting a pet named after a character in “The Lion King,” Simba was determined to be a hunter.
“Are you a lion?” MichellaDonna quipped in a video from March.
While fans Shop Cats fans click for the kitties, MichellaDonna says she hopes they’ll stay for a side of culture. She’s bi-lingual and sometimes interviews bodega owners and customers in Spanish.
“If they speak Spanish, I’ll speak to them in Spanish. Some of the owners teach me Arabic. For me, to speak the language is a highlight. These owners are open and available to people at all times,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
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