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It’s Tuesday.

Weather: Mostly sunny, but watch out for chilling gusts. High in the low 40s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until Feb. 11 (Lunar New Year’s Eve).

Tomorrow, Joseph R. Biden Jr. will become the 46th president of the United States. And among those poised to have major influence on the new administration’s policies are several people with connections to New York City.

They include Avril D. Haines, who is Mr. Biden’s pick for director of national intelligence and who was raised in Manhattan and attended Hunter College High School, and the Brooklyn-born Chuck Schumer, who is set to become the first Senate majority leader from New York.

On Monday, Mr. Biden named Polly Trottenberg, who resigned from her post as the city’s transportation commissioner in December, as his pick for deputy transportation secretary.

Others who may figure prominently:

Janet L. Yellen

If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Yellen would become the first female Treasury secretary, taking the mantle of the department as the pandemic continues to devastate many parts of the economy.

Ms. Yellen was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and raised in Bay Ridge. She was the valedictorian at Fort Hamilton High School in 1963. She wrote in the school newspaper that her hobbies included “attending Off Broadway theater, eating, riding the 69 St. Ferry, exploring New York City, and reading philosophy so that I can write unpopular essays.”

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci

Dr. Fauci will continue as the nation’s top infectious-disease expert under Mr. Biden, and he will also become a chief medical adviser to the president.

In the past year, as Dr. Fauci became one of the faces of the country’s pandemic response, it was hard to miss his Brooklyn accent. Dr. Fauci grew up in an Italian enclave in Bensonhurst. As a boy, he delivered prescriptions for his parents’ pharmacy, and he was captain of the basketball team at Regis High, an elite Jesuit school in Manhattan.

Antony Blinken

Mr. Blinken, the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, grew up on the Upper East Side and attended the Dalton School, a Manhattan private school, before moving to France. He earned his law degree from Columbia Law School and practiced law in New York.

Deanne Criswell

Last week, Mr. Biden named Ms. Criswell, the commissioner of New York City’s Emergency Management Department, to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In recent years, FEMA has grappled with the coronavirus, wildfires, hurricanes and the devastating effects of climate change.

In New York City, Ms. Criswell directed the city’s response last year to powerful storms like Tropical Storm Isaias, as well as extreme heat and blackouts.

From The Times

On King Holiday, New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Vie for Attention

Mets’ New General Manager Accused of Harassing Female Reporter

New York Police Arrest Dozens as M.L.K. Day Marchers Gather Near City Hall

Inside a Nursing Home as Vaccine Arrives: ‘I Hope Everybody Takes It’

Church of Satan’s ‘Halloween House’ Gutted by Arsonist

Want more news? Check out our full coverage.

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

An 8-year-old boy accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a gun in the Bronx, the police said. [Daily News]

Times Square foot traffic was down 70 percent in December. [Gothamist]

A hiker found a human skull and other bones in a Staten Island park, the police said. [New York Post]

And finally: Stray cats landing on their feet

Lauren Vespoli writes:

Last summer, Jali Henry was feeling lonely after many of her friends moved out of the city because of the pandemic. “I literally had no one,” she said.

Then she began noticing street cats in Williamsburg, where she lives: first, four that lived behind a school; then, a cat on her block, obviously sick and infested with fleas. Ms. Henry, 28, who had started volunteering with the rescue group Puppy Kitty NYC, corralled the cat and took it to the vet.

Ms. Henry started to foster kittens, too. “I used to feel like I didn’t want to be in New York anymore,” she said, “but once I started fostering, I finally found something that made me happy and really occupied my time.”

Ms. Henry is not alone. Longtime animal-rescue volunteers in the city suspect that there are more stray and feral cats on the streets these days. But there are also, it turns out, more New Yorkers like Ms. Henry who want to rescue and foster them.

It takes a certain level of privilege to foster animals at a time when many New Yorkers are struggling to take care of themselves and their families. The pandemic has underscored the vast disparities among New York’s human residents, which trickle down to the city’s cats.

Betty Arce, a retired education administrator who has been rescuing cats for eight years in the Bronx, said that she had never seen as many cats on the streets before, especially friendly cats and, starting last spring, kittens.

Ms. Henry now carries cat food in her bag whenever she leaves the house and is considering a few other life hacks. “I always walk around with my headphones in,” she said, “but maybe I should stop because I’m not going to be able to hear little meows to rescue kittens if I’m always listening to music.”

It’s Tuesday — find a furry friend.

Metropolitan Diary: Hardware search

Dear Diary:

It was a summer day when I stopped by a hardware store on Broome Street to see whether it might have a knob to replace the broken one on my backpacking stove.

The employees there said they didn’t have what I needed, but they directed me to an electrical supply store on Grand and Mulberry Streets.

That store didn’t have the knob either, but the workers there sent me to a hardware store on Chrystie Street.

No luck again, but I was directed this time to a different store around the corner on the Bowery. That store couldn’t help me, but I got lucky at the one next door, Rainbow Kitchen Supply.

Workers there pulled out a tub filled with a collection of leftover knobs. The fourth one I tried fit perfectly.

And they didn’t charge me a penny because “it’s a hot day out.”

— Helen Cole

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