Amid the goods found in the stores, there is one thing that many owners and employees say they cannot do without: their cats. And it goes beyond cuddly companionship. These cats are workers, tireless and enthusiastic hunters of unwanted vermin, and they typically do a far better job than exterminators and poisons.

When a bodega cat is on the prowl, workers say, rats and mice vanish.

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But as efficient as the cats may be, their presence in stores can lead to legal trouble. The city’s health code and state law forbid animals in places where food or beverages are sold for human consumption. Fines range from $300 for a first offense to $2,000 or higher for subsequent offenses.

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Still, many store owners keep cats despite the law, mainly because other options have failed and the fine for rodent feces is also $300. “It’s hard for bodega owners because they’re not supposed to have a cat, but they’re also not supposed to have rats,” said José Fernández, the president of the Bodega Association of the United States.

Luis Martinez, 42, has managed his brother’s grocery in East New York, Brooklyn, for two years. At first, despite weekly visits from an exterminator, the store’s inventory was ravaged constantly by nibbling vermin.

“Every night I had to put the bread in the freezer,” he said, pointing at shelves filled with bread and hamburger buns. “I was losing too much inventory. The chips and the Lipton soups all had holes in them.”

Then, last winter, a friend brought Mr. Martinez a marmalade kitten in need of a home. Mr. Martinez, who was skeptical of how one slinky kitten could fend off an army of hungry rats, set up a litter box in the back of the store, put down an old fleece jacket and named the kitten Junior.

Within two weeks, Mr. Martinez said, “a miracle.”

It took seven buses and three subway trains to trek through five boroughs along roughly the same 26.2-mile route some 40,000 runners will follow this Sunday.

My race began on the S53 bus in Staten Island, and like the start of the actual marathon, there was little space to breathe.

I had to duck errant elbows and fists, and thanks to one of my fellow riders, I was overcome by the odor of a thousand people sweating.

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If I made every single connection, I could complete the marathon in three hours, 45 minutes — a respectable finish an hour quicker than my running time last year.

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I crossed the finish line in Central Park in four hours, 57 minutes — two minutes slower than I ran the race in 2006.

Of that time, I spent three hours, 15 minutes riding buses and subways and another one hour, 42 minutes waiting for them.

Calls to 25 city agencies last Friday found that 10 top officials had left early or were gone for the day. One was vacationing in the West, another had just begun a weeklong holiday with his family, and others had skipped out of the office early.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, did not appear concerned about the missing officials, telling The New York Sun via e-mail that when a commissioner is out of the office, it’s typically the first deputy commissioner who takes charge.

With the state Legislature on break, the City Council calendar nearly empty, and New York settling into the quiet stretch of summer that begins with August and doesn’t end until after Labor Day weekend, there could be more of that going on than usual.

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