Todd Bookman (3:43)

Just a heads up before listening. There's explicit language throughout this series that might not be suitable for all ears. Also, if you're interested, we have photos, links, and more@nhpr.org Tibs.

Rose Garcia (3:58)

This store owner stole her cat.

Todd Bookman (4:00)

Hey, what's that? This store owner stole her cat. I want to start by playing you a little sound. It's from a protest. Hey, what's that? I'll do my best to describe what's happening, but it's not easy. It's a strange scene. I wasn't there, but I've spoken to people who were, and there's plenty of videos. The protest takes place in Manchester, New Hampshire. Bright, sunny June day last summer. There are five people standing on a sidewalk, evenly spaced in front of a business. Maybe you think there's a lot to protest these days, maybe you don't. But this is not a protest you've seen on the news before. This protest is about someone's pet.

AT&T Representative (4:41)

If the Internet didn't teach you anything.

Todd Bookman (4:43)

You don't fuck with people's cats. It gets weirder. A woman drives up, parks her car, gets out. Apparently she's the target of the protest. But rather than say anything to the protesters, she just stands near them, looking at them, twirling her keys. Six people on a sidewalk. Five protesting one. It's 3pm on a Sunday. Traffic streams by. If an alien came down to earth and this is what they saw, they'd be right to wonder, is this typical human behavior? The cat at the center of all this is 19 years old, practically ancient. A Maine coon with tiger striping and white whiskers, soft eyes. His name?

Rose Garcia (5:43)

Sergeant Tibbs. Yeah, from 101 Dalmatians.

Todd Bookman (5:46)

And this is Rose Garcia. Rose is Tibbs person. Not originally, though. The cat actually belonged to Rose's ex.

Rose Garcia (5:55)

I don't talk to the guy anymore. He's like such a loser.

Todd Bookman (5:58)

But when Rose and the loser split, she took two of his cats, Toby and Tibbs. And Toby's cool, he's got little brother energy. But Sergeant Tibbs, man, Rose and Tibbs are tight. She showed me some videos of him hitching rides on her shoulders, snuggling up. Tibbs is a fluffball, but also kind of a bad boy.

Rose Garcia (6:20)

He has a little snaggle tooth. He's missing one of his little teethies because he broke his tooth on. On a rat.

Todd Bookman (6:28)

What?

Rose Garcia (6:29)

Yeah, I had to bring him to the freaking vet the next day because they were like, okay, we need to. Just to make sure that he didn't ingest anything because he brought home a freaking big ass mouse that he killed. Yeah, he killed it. I was like, thank you.

Todd Bookman (6:48)

Their own love language. Rose is in her mid-30s, works from home, keeps an eye on the pets. Tibbs is an indoor outdoor boy. He likes to circle his little corner of Manchester, New Hampshire, where Rose now lives with a new cat guy, Cody. Cody drives a tow truck. Not a loser. And there have been times when Tibbs has disappeared for a night or two. Rose would let him out and he wouldn't come home right away. She leaves food out on the porch for him. She'll move his litter box outside. He always knows the way home.

Rose Garcia (7:23)

Tibbs comes back. No matter what, he comes back.

Todd Bookman (7:26)

But in early June 2024, Tibbs leaves, and this time he does not come back.

Rose Garcia (7:34)

I look around the neighborhood and so I look in all his spots and he's not there. I go down by the park and he's not there. And I go down the block and I look around there and he's not there. And that's when I come to terms that, like, you know, if he left, he did not want me to find him. Like. Like he's gone gone. Like, yeah. That's when I kind of realized that he's probably not going to come back.

Todd Bookman (8:03)

Rose spends days searching for Tibbs and then starts to come to terms with it. Remember, he's really old. 19. Just a week before Tibbs went missing. Rose had to rush him to the vet. He was having trouble breathing. She says the vet told her that Tibbs was not long for this world. He has arthritis, asthma. He's rapidly losing weight. He can't really groom himself. So Rose has been shaving mats out of his fur. The kind of elder care we all deserve. So when Tibbs goes missing, Rose starts to think he went off to die on his own, the way some animals do. They'll hide at the end, even from the people they love. But what Rose didn't know is that Tibbs was not dead, wasn't even lost. Something that would turn out to be so much worse for Rose had happened. Tibbs had been found. My name is Todd Bookman. I'm a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, also a cat guy. And I've been investigating the final days of Sergeant Tibbs, which I have to say did not initially make sense to my editor. Generally, I'm covering news like news news in New Hampshire. The governor, the legislature, court cases, that sort of thing. But Tibbs, Tibbs was impossible to let go. This story about a cat lost and a cat found, a story about what we owe our pets and what we owe our neighbors. A story about what happens when a dispute between two people IRL becomes fodder for the Internet, and maybe what all this says or doesn't say about the way we relate to each other these days. Tibbs is not news news, but for a few chaotic days last summer in Manchester, New Hampshire, Tibbs was the biggest story around. And for whatever reason, I just wanted to figure out what happened.

Rebecca LaVoy (10:22)

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AT&T Representative (11:43)

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Rebecca LaVoy (12:15)

Hey, Rebecca Lavoy here. I'm the director of On Demand Audio at nhpr. If you've been listening to today's episode, you might be curious what it take staff to equipment to general know how to make a podcast come to life. And perhaps you're interested in making your own series. Which is why you should check out Podcast Perspectives, the Signal Award winning show produced by our friends at the podglomerate. Podcast Perspectives explores the audio industry through conversations and panel discussions with the experts behind the podcast we love from The Washington Post, iHeartradition, Slate, Pushkin, Lemonada and beyond to discuss everything from how to produce the best series to ways to monetize and grow your show to reach more audiences. If you're looking for a place to start, check out their recent episodes with Alex Goldman. He was previously the host of Gimlet's Reply all and now hosts radiotopia's brand new series Hyperfixed. He talks about what it takes to find the heart of a story, or if you want to hear the behind the scenes stories for how NHPR podcasts like Outside in and Bear Brook were made, then check out my own episode in Podcast Perspectives feed. The show is designed to be approachable and actionable for anyone regardless of podcasting experience. So follow Podcast Perspectives on your favorite podcast app and tell them NHPR sends you.

Todd Bookman (13:40)

The west side of Manchester is largely residential, across a river from the city's downtown. A lot of multifamily units in a dense street grid, vinyl siding. Working class. And I found myself in an apartment here with two women. A mother, daughter, pair. We can stand here. It's fine with me. Is everybody comfortable?

Debbie Valente (14:01)

We can all sit. The floors are clean. Shall we sit?

Todd Bookman (14:04)

You want to sit on the floor?

Debbie Valente (14:05)

Sure.

Todd Bookman (14:06)

Debbie Ann Valente invites me to sit down in an echoey apartment. Debbie is the landlord here. The unit's being renovated. There's no furniture, so we pop an uncomfortable squat.

Debbie Valente (14:18)

I don't want my feet. And where you are. It's rude to have my feet in your face. But I can't bend my leg.

Todd Bookman (14:24)

Debbie's daughter Sabrina is here too, because Sabrina is the one who actually first found Tibbs. But Debbie does most of the talking.

Debbie Valente (14:33)

Yeah, if you go down the stairs we came in on, there's a back parking area. He was there.

Todd Bookman (14:38)

Sabrina and her friend were changing a car battery when this scraggly cat with some shaved patches walks up behind them. Sabrina sends pictures of the cat to her mom, Debbie. And what did he look like?

Debbie Valente (14:50)

I'll show you pictures. He was bleeding a little bit. It looked like he'd been run over by a car, but he wasn't crushed. Okay. If you touched that, if you touched his little body, he hurt like crazy.

Todd Bookman (15:04)

Poor Tibbs. He seems to be in bad shape. Sabrina, Debbie's daughter, tries to give him some food and then rushes him to an emergency vet.

Debbie Valente (15:13)

The cat. The records did say that the cat didn't have any microchip. It wasn't spayed. There was no collar or anything on the cat when it was found, so there was no way of us tracing where it could have belonged. The vet wants to do a whole bunch of tests. I want to know if the cat doesn't look like it's going to make it. It honestly looked like it had cancer. I honestly thought it had cancer. Okay, well, if it's got cancer, you can't let an animal carry on in pain. Okay? And you can't let an animal stay in this condition. So I asked all on speaker, is he going to live? Does he have cancer? Am I prologging agony? And the vet said he doesn't look like he's in pain. We don't know what's all wrong with him, but we. And they did all the tests.

Todd Bookman (16:01)

Tibbs is anemic. The vet gives him fluids and an anti nausea drug. Sabrina takes Tibbs home, not really sure what to do. Debbie and Sabrina are animal people, so they Try to nurse him back to health, try to get him to eat something, but he noses away everything they offer wet and dry food.

Debbie Valente (16:20)

What he did eat, chicken livers. Chicken livers. Initially it was chicken livers and rice, but sometimes he just wanted the livers, he didn't want the rice.

Todd Bookman (16:32)

A few days go by and Tibbs is eating a bit. He's lounging in sunny spots on the floor, becoming a little social with them. How would you describe his personality?

Debbie Valente (16:42)

Very gentle, very. Loved getting patted. You had to be careful when you patted him though, because he was. He was all bone. So you couldn't just pat him normally. You had to like take two fingers and. And you know, you couldn't pet him normally.

Todd Bookman (16:56)

When Debbie and Sabrina first found Tibbs on June 7, they say they called the Manchester Animal Shelter. But the shelter wasn't taking in any cats. They were full. Sabrina posted a found cat listing on petco's Love Lost website. It's like a missed connection page for lost animals, photos and all. I've seen the posting. Tibbs looks like hell. Scrawny and half shaved. The posting doesn't get any bites. Debbie and Sabrina also put up a sign in a business they own.

Debbie Valente (17:27)

I'm asking people, everybody I see talk to in the neighborhood because we work there, you know, telling people we found this cat. And one lady says, I know that she saw the picture. She goes, I know that cat, that cat.

Todd Bookman (17:39)

The lady says to Debbie, I think he lives in the house next door, like right next door. Friday afternoon, June 28, Debbie leaves work, walks the maybe 30ft behind her building to the house next door, Rose's house. Debbie knocks on the door. And the knock on the door that Friday catches Rose off guard. She's still grieving what she thought was the death of Tibbs, who had disappeared from her life. It had been three weeks since she'd last seen him and now suddenly someone's at the door telling her he's still alive.

Rose Garcia (18:17)

Around 2 to 3pm, she comes knocking my door. Friday tells me that she's had my cat for the last three weeks and she's paid $6,000 in medical bills and they don't know what's wrong with them.

Todd Bookman (18:29)

Did you know who she was?

Rose Garcia (18:30)

I did, yeah. And you know, I knew because she's the landlord from this place.

Todd Bookman (18:35)

Rose points to the building Debbie owns. She says she's seen her across the yard, but they don't formally meet till that Friday. On Rose's porch, Rose remembers that she thanked Debbie, thanked her for taking care of Tibs for taking him to the vet. Debbie's memory of this conversation, though quite different.

Debbie Valente (18:54)

She came out, she said it was her cats. I said, well, what's wrong with your cat? Because I'm doing all these tests on your cats and it would save your cats a lot of stress not to do them and a lot of issues. If we can figure out and you know what's wrong with your cat and we can get it back to its health. She said she had let the cat out to go and die on its own terms.

Todd Bookman (19:17)

The miscommunication of all miscommunications here. Rose's fear was that Tibbs had gone to die on his own terms. But what Debbie hears is that Rose had abandoned a 19 year old cat on a busy city street. And then according to Rose, she asked.

Rose Garcia (19:35)

Me if I wanted my cat back. She's like, yeah, but if you want him back, you know, obviously I'll give him back because it's your cat, you know, it's your cat. And I was like, yeah, I do want him back. You know, he's got meds in here, he's got brothers in here, thank you so much. And she's like, okay, well, I do have antibiotics that I'm gonna pick up for him later, so I'll drop him off right after. And I was like, okay, okay.

Todd Bookman (19:56)

Rose is left with the impression that Debbie was gonna come back like that afternoon with the cat. Rose and Debbie trade some texts. Debbie actually sends photos of Tibbs. Rose writes back, I can't really express to you how much you helping him means to me. But Friday afternoon stretches into Friday evening. Debbie's headlights don't swing back into the driveway and Rose starts to get anxious. What's taking so long? Where's Debbie? Where's Tibbs? A few more hours go by. Rose texts again, asking if Debbie had an estimate of what time she's coming. Debbie asks if she can call Rose later, but she doesn't call. Finally, 9:56pm, Rose calls Debbie and Debbie picks up.

Rose Garcia (20:43)

And then she said, yeah, you know, you're not gonna, you shouldn't be waiting out there. You're not gonna get this cat back. You know, from when we talked, it sounded like you can't really afford this cat and he was starving and he. And I was like, what the are you talking? I was like, what are you talking? You said you were coming to my cat, my house with my cat. Here I am thinking of doing something nice. And she's like, I don't have to do anything for you. And that's when I hung up instantly, because I was seeing red and I couldn't even breathe. Like, I was like, choking, like. And that's when I started panicking. My whole world turned upside down.

Todd Bookman (21:22)

Sergeant Tibbs is still alive. Not dead, not lost, but alive. And with a neighbor. A neighbor who seems helpful at first, but now what? She won't give Tibbs back. Rose is losing it. What can she do? She decides to take to social media. She writes, this lady is stealing my cat. I'm going insane. Rose clicks the post button, a click that would have serious consequences almost immediately, because over the next few days, things would spiral out of control. Online comments start flooding in. JusticeFortibs is born. The Internet has decided to weigh in. Was Sergeant Tibbs rescued or stolen? That's next. Time on Part two of the Final Days of Sergeant Tibbs.

Rebecca LaVoy (22:14)

Foreign.

Todd Bookman (22:20)

The Final Days of Sargent Tibbs is a production of the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

Rebecca LaVoy (22:27)

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