Jeffrey Lucas, a longtime friend of KitKat, said the “funniest thing” he ever did with KitKat was “teach him Ukrainian.”
He taught the bodega cat two simple commands: De kit (Where’s the cat?) and Kit tam (Cat’s over there). Lucas recalled this while sitting at the end of the bar on Tuesday at Delirium, next to Randa’s Market, the liquor store that KitKat called home.
“He knew Ukrainian, a little bit,” Lucas said, looking down at the bar. He and other Delirium patrons, who had gathered to remember their friend, raised a glass in the cat’s honor.
KitKat, 9 years old, was found dying in the street on Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Numerous friends and neighbors said the cat was hit and killed by a Waymo autonomous vehicle.
Jeff Klein told Mission Local via email that he was driving east on 16th Street with a friend on Monday at approximately 11:40 p.m. when he saw a Waymo swerve in front of them.
“Some folks on the sidewalk started yelling, and grabbed the cat right out from under where the Waymo swerved from,” Klein wrote, who managed to snap a photo of the car before it drove away.
A 311 complaint filed at 12:51 a.m. on Tuesday morning alleged that a Waymo “hit the liquor store’s cat that was sitting in the sidewalk next to the transit lane” and that the autonomous car “did not even try to stop.”
Waymo did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s sad. Everyone’s heartbroken. I’ve been crying all fucking day and night,” said Jessica Chapdelaine, a bartender at Delirium who lives in an apartment above. “He’s the baby. He was everyone’s best friend, and he was just the sweetest boy.”
Neighbors up and down 16th Street and across the Mission District are mourning. KitKat was a staple of Randa’s, a go-to for many starting or ending their nights at the bars near 16th and Valencia streets.
Customers went out of their way to pet KitKat or bring him treats, neighbors and friends said. His preferred sleeping spot at the liquor store was next to the heating vent below the beers and cold drinks, or on the chair next to store proprietor Mike Zeidan. The counter would also do for a nap.
On Tuesday evening, some 15 people gathered around an altar outside Randa’s Market at 3131 16th St. near Valencia Street. Passers-by paused to pay respects.
Some embraced KitKat’s owner, Zeidan, in a hug. Others added offerings — Kit-Kat bars, small bottles of Cazadores tequila, ceramic cat figures, candles and bags of popcorn from the Roxie Theater next door — to the altar, which grew in size as the night went on.
Others were more political in their offerings: “Kill a Waymo! Save a Cat!” read a sign placed on the altar. “Kitty cats, not killer cars,” yelled a woman as she walked by.
One man, whose girlfriend works next door at Wrap & Roll sandwiches, stood with friends next to the altar. “He was the authority. We’d all joke that he was everyone’s boss because he’d check on all the employees at the businesses here.”
“We’re all just really heartbroken,” the man added.
Chapdelaine, the bartender, said KitKat acted as a de facto security guard.
“People would come in the shop and he would go follow them, make sure they didn’t steal nothing,” she said. “He’d go check the bars, make sure everything’s good. He was like our little security guard. He was our family.”
The cat would greet her every time she left the building, she said.
Inside the Little Roxie, Anna Yarbrough remembered meeting KitKat when Zeidan first got him, just before the pandemic.
“He was calm and stoic,” said Yarbrough, who called the neighborhood mascot’s death “devastating.”
“Losing any pet by a man-made thing is very heartbreaking, especially a driverless car,” said Yarbrough.
The Waymo allegedly hit KitKat late Monday close to midnight, according to Sheau-Wha Mau, a bartender at Delirium.
At the time, Mau was running karaoke. She walked outside and found KitKat lying on the sidewalk, alive and with a broken leg, spitting blood. The Waymo, she said, had already left.
After a few minutes, Mau found a ride and took KitKat to a 24-hour veterinarian hospital at 18th and Arkansas streets. It was at this hospital where the “neighborhood ambassador,” as Mau called him, died. Zeidan arrived five minutes later.
Zeidan, for his part, said it was still too soon and too painful to talk about the incident.
Earlier this year, I watched a cat in its final moments after getting run over by a car outside Mothership. I don’t think the driver even noticed; alarming, considering the fact that I saw the vehicle bounce as it ran over the poor thing.
Can we get rid of these things please? We have buses. We have trains. We have electric scooters, bikes, and skateboards. Why do we need these implements of death with cagers, human or silicon, behind the wheel?
No we are not getting rid of automobiles, which are one of the greatest inventions to date for empowering individuals and giving society independence and mobility previous generations only dreamed of. Also, no, mass transportation is not even remotely a replacement for the personal automobile and neither are scooters bikes and skate boards. As to this incidebt, perhaps if one of the people so broken up over the cat had seen fit to take it in and keep it out of the street it would still be alive.
> automobiles, which are one of the greatest inventions to date for empowering individuals and giving society independence and mobility previous generations only dreamed of
No one is going to argue that point. The argument being made is about whether or not those are the right goals. The empowerment and independence comes at a cost. Personally, I’d like to see a whole lot less cars. They’re noisy, they stink, they hit pedestrians and cyclists at a greater frequency, and they cover the city in brake dust and other particulate, just to name a few of the costs to everyone.
Save a cat
Kill Waymo
You guys think Waymos are bad for killing a cat? You should see what the human drivers do! They kill bikers and pedestrians!! #killAllDrivers
Waymos can’t be held accountable, humans can.
This is very unfortunate about kit Kat. But I lived at 16th and Albion in the early ’90s. Does not appear a lot has changed down there. I know city cats can be pretty agile, but that does not seem like the safest place for an outdoor cat to be wandering around, traffic wise that is, waymo or otherwise.
So sorry for the loss of KitKat. 🙁
Justice for KitKat!
One less cat, one more Waymo. Now that is progess for our progressives!
KIT
KAT
I know this kitty. I’m so sad to read this. I have a photo of my daughter petting this cat from this summer. I am a dog person but I can tell a cool cat when I meet one. RIP KitKat. I can tell u brought a lot of joy to those that knew you.
Sorry for your loss of a dear friend
RIP sweet boy. I will dearly miss meeting him while walking down 16th.
Poor kitty, will never ride a waymo. RiP 🐈
Seriously? As though Waymo is the only thing that’s ever hit a cat in the street. If it even did and didn’t just come along after it was already hit. Maybe somebody should have given the cat a home where it wasn’t in the street to get hit?
The issue is that Waymos literally ignore them by design whereas human drivers have the capability of seeing them and avoiding. Waymos are a flawed product being beta-tested on our streets.
That’s sad, it was always delightful seeing KitKat while walking along that stretch of 16th St.
So out of all the people who liked KitKat so much none saw a problem with him free roaming around a busy street over the course of 9 years? Pretty amazing he lasted that long.
Blame the politicians for failing to act on street safety. For some bizarre reason cars are seen as sacrosanct, even though there are just as many car related deaths as gun related deaths.
For 9 years drivers managed to not hit him. Enter Waymo.
Blessed be, little cat. RIP.
So everybody is so sad but in 9 years nobody could take the cat in and give it a home where it wasn’t wandering in the street? This isn’t Waymos fault. I see dead cats and dogs weekly along the roads and I highly doubt any were run over by Waymos.
Very sad. But this is why in the city, all cats should be indoor cats.
“Because Waymos can’t be programmed to safely operate” seems like a pretty lame excuse though for all the fanbois breathlessly defending their failures.
The owner of the beloved Kit Kat should sue Waymo, and police should cite and arrest the Waymo manager in charge of the killing vehicle.
Tekedra Mawakana of Waymo speaks breezily of empathy, trust, and humility with the public – so where is her response in terms of support for a grieving community expecting her personal restitution and support for cat welfare organizations? She and her co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov are the humans driving that heartlessly killing car – and no, Takedra, we don’t “accept” this death by your robot in this manner as inevitable.
I read SF Public Safety News on Twitter to find out what’s really going on in the Mission. I read Mission Local for a somewhat painful laugh about what the progressives think is important. Like this.
A dead cat? Have you ever actually been to 16th and Mission at night? There are people selling deadly drugs, junkies passed out, human lives being ruined.
Well, at least this keeps y’all from blockading traffic for Gaza again.
Sir or madam —
Somehow you missed hundreds of articles about 16th and Mission on this site. This downgrades the value of whatever you’re trying to say here.
As to what you’re trying to say here: A much-loved animal is dead and there is no contractural requirement for you to come on here and be a jerk.
JE
Waymo riders should be shamed publicly on sight. LET THEM KNOW!
How many animals do human drivers kill?
Robot mileage, despite its wattage-devouring vast superfluosness, isn’t even a rounding error on human mileage, and the total number of robot cars is a small fraction of the number of human-driven cars.
Statistically speaking – even with the millions of meaningless early a.m. empty street hours logged – robot cars are a already a menace, and Waymo’s CEO was already priming the pump of incremental mayhem the same day KitKat was murdered.
Your statistical innumeracy can be disregarded if you are a sincere but midguided reader actually concerned that robot cars, like an oppressed human social minority group, are being unfairly maligned, but if you are a tech shill tasked with a logical fallacy to propagate, harrumph.
You didn’t provide a shred of evidence Waymos have any more accidents per mile than human drivers.
Waymo’s stats are bogus because much or even most of the “accident-free” millions of miles occurs in the wee hours when there’s no traffic and gangs of five or six waymos circle for hours, racking up “accident-free” miles and using up scarce resources.
Not only are Waymos a menace, they are helping acclerate climate change.
Good job, guys!
Youve provided exactly zero evidence that Waymo has any higher accident rate than human drivers. As far as this incident, if the cat was so beloved by so many, why was it simply allowed to run in the street?
That’s an awful lot of words to avoid answering “a lot”
Please accept my apology for using words to explain your logical fallacy borne of innumeracy.
Human drivers aren’t part of a hivemind of billionaires.
“I’m ok with more dead pets as long as it’s done by a human”
People can be held accountable, Waymo cannot.
“I’m ok with surveillance platforms unregulatedly killing pets in my neighborhood, because I’m a mindless automaton!”
“I’m pretending other people are idiots because my position of defending Waymo from responsibility demands it.”
FTFY Amy
That has zero relevance. You and the other Waymo critics simply don’t have any evidence showing Waymo has any higher accident rate than human drivers.
Waymo literally can’t see pets, humans can.
They “could” be better, but there’s no requirement that they actually are.
They’re a product being beta-tested on our streets without regulation.
Human beings avoided hitting this cat for a decade. Enter Waymo.
Human drivers can be held accountable and often are.
WAYMO CAN’T EVEN BE TICKETED.
Only an idiot would support that.
Oh yeah because human drivers don’t run over any of the dozens of cats and dogs I see dead along the roads every year. Heres an idea: Maybe instead of just going about their day and leaving the cat outside, somebody should have adopted it and taken steps to keep it out of the street where it was entirely foreseeable it would one day be run over. Maybe getting it some basic veterinary care wouldn’t have been out of the question either.
Human drivers CAN detect pets and stop, and be held accountable.
Both are not true for Waymo.
Apologists and faux-futurists be damned and roast in hell.