We lost Mr. Bibbs* on Monday, January 22, 2024. He died after a – fortunately – fairly brief illness, so he didn’t have too many bad days at the end.

He came to us as a feral cat. You can’t tell from the picture, but his left ear has been clipped, meaning he was “caught and released” – caught, neutered, probably got a rabies shot – and released back where he was caught.To this day we’re not sure of his actual age.

We fed him (outside), and Romy even made a little Rubbermaid house for him outside for the inclement weather. However, in January 2019, our area endured what they call a polar vortex, with temps as low as -23° (not even counting the wind chill). At this point he was a partially inside cat – even though we still had an existing, inside-only cat, Koko.

When Koko passed several months later, Mr. Bibbs took over the house.

But he never really took over. Unlike our earlier cats, who loved to lounge on the under-the-windows bookcases in my upstairs office watching the world go by, or sitting by the screened front door. Bibbs never got into it. And to the end – after living in the house for three and a half years, he was still weirded out by visitors or even technicians who never came into the house. A very un-catlike cat.

I guess his upbring shaped his personality, and it’s tough to teach even a young cat new tricks.

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* Why Mr. Bibbs? Well, he was a gray tabby with a white “bib” of sorts. And Romy added the “Mr” and extra “b” as an homage to Sidney Poitier’s character in In the Heat of the Night: “They call me Mister Tibbs.”