Just over a month after a Waymo autonomous car hit and killed KitKat, the beloved Mission bodega cat, Randa’s Market welcomed a new feline to its store late last week: Coco, a six-month-old white kitty with blue eyes, who is already winning over dozens of customers daily.
“There won’t be another KitKat, but she’s bringing a spark back to the neighborhood,” said a man named AJ as he left the 16th and Valencia store after petting Coco on his way out. “People are already going crazy for her.”
A neighbor gifted Coco to Mike Zeidan, the owner of the market, last week. After multiple suggestions, the name Coco was chosen via an Instagram poll. It is a reference to Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt from 51 to 31 B.C., said a Randa’s Market employee Abraham T.
Customers did not only bring the kitty, but also two large handmade signs reading “KitKat Market” that now sit on the front door and by the register. When asked if Randa’s Market was changing its name, two employees said no, but that they had decided to keep the signs to honor their dead friend.
Amber Bishop, a neighbor, said she’s happy to see Coco on her way to and from work. On Tuesday morning, she gave the white cat a few good morning scratches as she walked by.
Coco is not there to be KitKat. She’s there to be Coco, said the store’s employee, Abraham. She’s still exploring and getting used to the space.
“I see her running around the store and pawing the TVs,” AJ said. So far, her preferred destination seems to be the top of the fridges.
She was described as feisty, friendly, cute, and a little scared of the outside world — a couple days ago, she walked outside to chase pigeons and, when a truck drove by, ran back inside the store in fright.
David Vidale, another Randa’s Market worker, said that, on his watch, Coco will stay inside the store as much as possible. KitKat, after all, died after a Waymo ran him over on the street.
The company said in October it was going to make a donation to a local animal organization in KitKat’s honor, though on Monday, Waymo did not confirm if it had made the donation, the name of the organization or the amount it had donated.
Also on Monday, Waymo confirmed that another of its cars hit a dog in the Western Addition neighborhood on Nov. 30. It is unknown if the dog survived the incident.
But on 16th Street, after everything that’s happened over the last month, Coco’s presence has lifted the community’s spirit, Abraham T. said.
“Coco gives us hope,” he said. “Customers already love her.”
People who love their cats protect them by keeping them inside. SF ACC reports receiving the bodies of a dozen cats hit by cars each week– and most are not reported.
I’ve fostered orphaned kittens for decades. Every rescue I’ve worked with requires adoptive owners to keep the kitten inside. It looks like Coco already is exploring on 16th. If the store owners love her, they will keep her inside the store, including at night. But I fear we’ll be reading about another sad event. I hope not.
The issue is Waymo can’t see pets or animals of any kind because no one forces them to accommodate that need and idiots run distraction against it.
I favor fewer raccoons.
If Coco is allowed to run in the street she’ll get flattened too.
And get fleas!!!
At a glance I’m pretty sure that “white kitty with blue eyes” is a Siamese, possibly a lilac point. I had a seal point Siamese growing up. They have loud voices and lots of personality.
She’s a Tortie Point Siamese. A very cute one at that! I hope she remains inside. And the bodega, and the neighborhood, is very lucky to have her!!
Can we get this kind of coverage for the human beings: the women, men and children of San Francisco, and their bereaved families, who get mowed down by human drivers like we’re apparently doing for a pet run over by a robot?
21 humans were killed this year on SF roadways thanks to other humans, and it only garners a press bulletin.
Roger, I suspect that antipathy towards entities like Uber and Waymo explain this otherwise strange prioritization of incidents more than any genuine concern for the human victims of traffic accidents in general.
@Roger – Most people have no idea that cars hospitalize 2-3 people every day in this city. Some years back, the _San_Francisco_Examiner_ increased the news coverage of this (about 2 stories a week) and they were lambasted for it, accused of overemphasizing it as part of the mythical tabloid War On Cars conspiracy.
That said, there are issues with Waymo that go uncovered, and I’m afraid not enough of those have come to light even with KitKat’s death.
Go ahead and cover it. Who got mowed down today in SF?
Oh right you’re making it up to cover for a robot surveillance company.
A 72-year old pedestrian crossing the street at Mason & Broadway (Russian Hill) was struck and killed by a human driving a car @ 10:45am on Tuesday December 2nd as reported in the SF Chronicle.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/russian-hill-pedestrian-killed-21220885.php
Well this aged like milk in a hot car.
The headline should read:
“Irresponsible Pet Owner Gets Another Cat After Allowing Previous One to Get Run Over”
My god, this is truly local news.
CoCo looks,part Siamese, next time keep her in doors, due to the fact that indoor cats live longer.
It sounds like you are just feeding cats to cars.
They shouldn’t be allowed to have another cat. They are irresponsible pet owners. Is the cat spayed? Chipped? Where are they getting replacement cats from? I know neither the SPCA nor Animal Control adopts cats out to outside homes. Maybe they should be investigating this.
Coco is as doomed as KitKat was.
🤖 Every time some robotaxi coverage happens, there’s an unexamined assumption voiced, often in the article but sometimes in the comments, that AI is just going to get better and better. While this is theoretically possible, what we’ve seen during the Waymo pilot is trending in the other direction.
What we’ve seen with a lot of tech is trending in the other generation. Waymo’s parent company’s flagship product is the Google search engine, and it has gotten worse and worse over the years. (See Cory Doctorow’s _Enshittification_ for details.)
From the outset we’ve seen Waymo’s robotaxis complying with the law better than many human drivers, sometimes “to a fault,” enraging impatient human drivers who are behind them or boxed in by them. There’s been some change recently, with them rolling STOP signs and pulling into the intersection prematurely (and they have always not fully honored crosswalk right-of-way). Why have they “learned” to behave this way?
Most AI technologies have been foisted on us for profit-driven reasons, not because they make things better. Human motorists have long been given much more leniency than they have deserved, to the tune of 40,000 fatalities a year, and the robotaxis are apparently being programmed (by human motorists) to test the limits of what they, too, will be able to get away with. Couple this with a lack of independent accountability, and I have reason to doubt that things will trend anywhere but some lousy standard of acceptable loss spun as “better.”
In before fools who think paying double money per ride for robot surveillance that spies on us for profit and steals jobs from humans but still can’t see pets is somehow the future. The future of lazy yuppies maybe. Waymo sucks – Waymo apologists suck.
Oh good lord do you have any idea how many cats and dogs human drivers run over every year? All these people supposedly loved that cat but yet it was left for years to run in the street to finally get run over. Amazing it lived that long.