Oh, how terribly boho- the Algonquin has a Hotel cat. Why, the cat even answers email. None of this 
can compare to Hotel Chelsea where cats come in one's window at night, presumably hunting the complimentary mice that come with the room.
If people want wildlife at reception the Chelsea has Stanley... The poor old Algonquin, nothing more than a relic of past glories while the Chelsea remains vibrant with creative energy.
[pictured: one of the cats who visited my room at the Chelsea.]
Channeling the Cat's Meow- NYT
By BROOKE HAUSER
Published: July 9, 2006
AT the Algonquin Hotel there is a popular saying: "Dogs have owners. Cats have staff." In the case of a fleecy, blue-eyed Birman named Matilda II, the hotel's current cat-in-residence, that staff now includes a ghostwriter.
Matilda, 10 years old, is the most recent of a long line of felines that have had carte blanche at the hotel since the 1930's.
She is, however, the first of the hotel's cats to have her own e-mail address: matildaalgonquincat @algonquinhotel.com. And for the last 18 months, the task of answering Matilda's fan mail from around the world has been left to someone with opposable thumbs. That would be Alice de Almeida, the executive assistant to the general manager, Bill Liles. (He, sad to say, is allergic to cats.)
When Ms. de Almeida, 60, was hired for the job at the Algonquin, she had no idea that one of her main duties would be to act as the mouthpiece for a mouser. But after two decades of doing administrative work at hotels in Manhattan, including the Peninsula and the Parker Meridian, she jumped at the chance.
"I thought it was just great that the hotel had a cat," said Ms. de Almeida, whose desk features photographs of her own rescued strays: Puddy Tat, Al E. Kat, Spitz, Einstein and Rags. "And then when I found out that I was actually her voice, I died and went to heaven."
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