We met with the City Council's Animal Welfare Caucus + One More Thing

14,284 of you have signed now, and that number is the reason meetings like this happen.

This week I sat down with the executive director of the City Council's Animal Welfare Caucus and legislative staff from a council member's office to brief them on Int. 0830, the bodega cat bill. The caucus didn't exist until this spring — twenty council members, Staten Island to Brooklyn, meeting about animal issues, the first body of its kind in the city's history. For years the cats had no one inside the building. Now there's a whole room.

I can't tell you where anyone stands on the bill, and that's how it should work. What I can tell you is that they were kind, they had done their reading, and they asked sharp questions.

The bill sits in the Committee on Health with no hearing scheduled yet. When one gets on the calendar, I'm going to ask you to show up. A hearing room full of people who care about these cats is the loudest argument we have.

If you only ever hear from me when Change.org sends an update, I started a free newsletter for everything in between — bill news as it happens, the cats themselves, what's next for the campaign. Sign up here and you won't miss the hearing announcement. 

One more thing. The four years I spent visiting these cats became a book — Bodega Cats of New York, photographs by Gulce Kilkis, out November 3. It exists because of this community. If you're curious, it's at bodegacatsofnewyork.com/book.

Thanks!
Dan