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They started a TikTok show about bodega cats. It immediately went viral.

Animals are having their moment in the sun on social media, from the phenomenon of Moo Deng, the Thai baby hippo, to the sagas of viral cat fights, which are documented on TikTok and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.

One of the stars in the world of “animal content” is “Shop Cats,” a local show in which host and Ridgewood native Michelladonna employs her charm and wit to speak to shop managers and locals about their beloved neighborhood felines. A typical video gets around 1 million views on TikTok and hundreds of effusive comments.

“I love these videos,” gushed one fan in the comments of a video of Layla and Mimi, bodega cats in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. “You’re doing such a wonderful job of telling the story of this city’s immigrant community with a fun angle.”

Shop Cats started in September and quickly gained a viral following.

Courtesy Mad Realities

The series launched in September 2024 and has quickly taken off on TikTok and Instagram. Its followers in New York and abroad come for the cats and stay for the whimsy. Over the course of an episode’s 90-second runtime, viewers are transported to a bodega cat’s universe of shelves and produce, while shopkeepers and patrons tell stories about their own relationships with the neighborhood pets.

The show is produced by Mad Realities, a production company focused on internet videos.

“Stylistically, some of the references early on were ‘MTV Cribs’ meets Steve Irwin — that MTV swagger but mixed in with that docu-style storytelling,” said Alice Ma, cofounder of Mad Realities.

Alice Ma is the co-creator of “Shop Cats.”

Courtesy Mad Realities

Gothamist spoke with Ma and the rest of creative team behind Shop Cats — creative producer Drew Rosenthal and host Michelladonna — about conceiving their show, going viral, paying tribute to New York City and more. Below is an edited version of their conversation.

The first viral video I saw from Shop Cats was of Kiki the cat. Did you guys have a moment when you knew this was going to take off?

Rosenthal: Kiki’s our most viral video. I think it’s over 6 million views between all platforms right now, and that was the first thing we ever shot for the show. She’s my local bodega cat on the corner right next to where I live, and I see her pretty much every day.

A day after we posted the first episode it was at 200,000 views and we already had over 10,000 followers on TikTok. That ratio of viewers to people hitting the follow button was crazy. I’ve never seen that before and I’ve made lots of viral content, which really goes to show that people were waiting for this.

Courtesy Mad Realities

Has there been anything that surprised you about going so viral so quickly?

Michelladonna: As a New Yorker, you get on a train, someone starts staring at you, we’re gonna have a problem, right? Now, I have to think about it: Are you looking at me because you want to fight or because you want to talk about how cute cats are? [laughs]

Rosenthal: It takes a little while to set up the microphone and get ready for our recordings, 15 minutes. Now, during this time, there are always at least a few people who ask, “Are you the Shop Cats lady?” The other day we were about to start shooting in front of a store when a truck driver came by, rolled down the window and started to scream, “Is that the cat lady?”

I'm sure the requests are pouring in. How do you care for the rest of the city's cats?

Ma: Everyone wants us to see their cat. When people direct message us or leave comments, we listen – when people tag us in Tiktok videos like “Look at this store manager” – we put them on a map for ourselves, and when we take photos, Let's take a look at the map and just come along. That was a big part of it. The community tells us where to go. There's also something we recently launched: New York City's first-ever cat mayoral election.

Drew Rosenthal is the creative producer behind the show.

Courtesy Mad Realities

Rosenthal: When we first made this show, a big question was, “Are there even enough cats in New York City to film? Are we going to run out of cats?” Right now, we have roughly 450 cats on our internal map.

When we accept a DM that’s like, “Hey, you gotta check out this cat at this intersection,” 90% of the time they also have pictures and videos locked and loaded. There’s no limit to the types of cat stories that we can tell on this platform. There’s just endless possibilities, and we’re never going to run out of cats to film.

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