A Beloved Bodega Cat Gets a Memorial in the Tenderloin

Photo by Laura Cohen

By John C Sulak 

For the last 11 years Mish Mish, the beloved Bodega cat, was a familiar feline friend to many who lived in the Lower Nob Hill and Tenderloin neighborhoods. His home was inside the Mid City Market at 866 Geary, and any time the store was open he was free to wander in and out. The sidewalk was his front yard. But, sadly, the latest incarnation of his nine lives has ended.

I first met Mish Mish when I spotted him on the curb next to a car parked on the North side of Geary. I immediately freaked out! I’ve seen too many “lost pet” fliers taped to SF telephone poles and lamp posts to not be worried about why he was there. Mish was mellow, though, as I carefully picked him up and used my cell phone to call the number on the ID tag on his collar.

The person who answered my call was friendly but not surprised. It was Eddy, one of the owners of the grocery store that I was, it turned out, standing right in front of. He told me I could bring the cat inside if I wanted, or I could just leave him there. Either way he would be okay.

That was a scene that must have been repeated many times as strangers encountered Mish Mish. After that I would always look for him when I was walking down Geary between Hyde and Larkin. If he wasn’t hanging out on the sidewalk I knew I could go inside the Market and find him curled up somewhere in one of the aisles. It was a comforting kind of ritual, in a not always comforting neighborhood.

Mish Mish appeared on the San Francisco Store Cats map created by Chris Arvin

Then last week one of Mish Mish’s loving fans posted a memorial for him on social media. I wondered if it was true, and hoped that it wasn’t. I reluctantly took a trip to the market to talk to Eddy. He confirmed the unfortunate news, and then shared a bit of Mish’s history.

“We adopted him from the SPCA when he was 2 months old,” Eddy told me. “We were getting apricots delivered to the store for our produce section that day, and the Arabic word for apricot is mishmish. And my brother and I were like, ‘Okay, we will call him Mish Mish.’”

“He was a little kitten, so we put him in the office. It took a bit of time to get to know him. We kept him in back, then we kept him in the backyard and then in the basement and then in the store. Then he started going outside and coming back. He would not cross the street.

“He had everything. Everybody on the block knew him. He was very spoiled. Customers came and brought him food, that’s why he was so big. And they gave him toys. He had tons of toys.”

Eddy said that Mish would never disappear, that he would always show up when they closed the store at 12:00 midnight and come back inside.

The much beloved Mish Mish. Photo by Laura Cohen

And then one day he didn’t. Mish Mish disappeared for three days, and then was found hiding in a box in the bathroom in back.

Eddy says that they “took him into the SPCA and had him checked out. One of our neighbors thinks he might have been attacked by a dog. But there was nothing, no blood. We think he was internally injured but I can’t tell you for sure yes or no.”

“There was nothing they could do. So we kept him in the office after that. He has his own bed. He was okay, he was eating and he was fine. But then it was not even a week later that we found him on the couch and he was dead. But he died peacefully.”

Eddy’s face then lit up as he told me that on October 12th he and his brother brought home a new kitten from the animal shelter. Eddy showed me some pictures of the beautiful animal, and said “He’s in training now. He’s in my office. Maybe after 3 months we’ll let him outside.”

And the kitten’s name, of course,is Mish Mish!

The new Mish Mish. Photo by Laura Cohen