The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs
Sgt. Tibbs, a fluffy, 19-year-old Maine Coon with tiger stripes, soft eyes, and a chipped tooth, is missing on the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire. His owner, Rose, fears the worst. But when she finds out her cat was never missing at all – the truth turns out to be worse than she feared.
From our friends over at the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, this is the first in a four-part series about what we owe our pets – and what we owe our neighbors.
Listen to the full series here.
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CREDITS
Host/Lead Reporter: Todd Bookman
Producers: Lauren Chooljian, Jason Moon
Lead Editors: Daniel Barrick and Katie Colaneri
Editing Help: Felix Poon, Zoey Knox, Rebecca Lavoie
Artwork and Web Design: Sara Plourde
Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi
Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario.
Executive producer: Taylor Quimby
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Audio Transcript
Nate Hegyi: Hey, it’s Nate Hegyi. I’m allergic to cats. It’s probably why I’ve never really loved them. But I respect cats – they’re sassy, independent, sleek… arguably way cooler than a dog. So when I heard that my colleagues at NHPR’s Document team had a whole new true crime miniseries about a cat controversy… I had to share it with y’all. Today we are bringing you part 1 of “The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs” And if you love it as much as I do… you can hear the rest of the series – there’s a link in the show notes.
Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Just a heads up before listening, there’s explicit language throughout the series that might not be suitable for all ears. Also, if you’re interested, we have photos, links, and more at NHPR.org/Tibbs.
People Chanting: [FADES UP] …What’s that? This store owner stole her cat! Hey! What’s that?! This store owner stole her cat! Hey! What’s that?! This… [FADES UNDER]
Todd Bookman, Narrating: I want to start by playing you a little sound. It’s from a protest.
People Chanting: [FADES BACK UP] Hey! What’s that?! This… [FADES UNDER]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
[MUSIC IN]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Male Protester: If the internet didn’t teach you anything, you don’t fuck with peoples’ cats!
[MUSIC UP, LOW CHANTING CONTINUES]
Bookman, Narrating: 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 3 p.m. on a Sunday. Traffic streams by.
Protesters: [FADES UP] …stole her cat! Hey! What’s that?! [PASSING TRUCK HONKS]
Protester, Yelling: Fuck yeah!!!
Protesters: …This store owner stole her cat! [CHANTING FADES OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: If an alien came down to earth and this is what they saw, they’d be right to wonder… is this typical human behavior?
[MUSIC UP]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
[MUSIC OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: His name?
Rose Garcia: Sgt. Tibbs, yeah, from “101 Dalmatians.”
Bookman, Narrating: And this is Rose Garcia. Rose is Tibbs’ person – not originally, though. The cat actually belonged to Rose’s ex.
Garcia: I don't talk to the guy anymore. He's, like, such a loser, but…
Bookman, Narrating: 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 Sgt. Tibbs, man... Rose and Tibbs are tight.
She showed me some videos of him hitching rides on her shoulders, snuggling up. Tibbs is a fluff ball, but also… kind of a bad boy.
Garcia: He has a little snaggletooth. He's missing one of his little teethies because he, uh, broke his tooth on, uh, on a rat.
Bookman: …What?
[MUSIC IN]
Garcia: Yeah, I had to bring him to the freaking vet the next day [LAUGHS] because they were like, “Okay, we need to just to make sure that he didn't ingest anything” because he, uh, brought home a freaking big ass mouse…
Bookman: …that he… killed?
Garcia: Yeah, he killed it. I was like, “Thank you! Ugh!”
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Garcia: [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE UP] Tibbs comes back. No matter what, he comes back. [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE UNDER]
[MUSIC OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: But in early June 2024, Tibbs leaves. And this time, he does not come back.
Garcia: I look around the neighborhood, and so I look in all his spots [SNIFFS] and he's not there. [VOICE BREAKS] 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 kinda realized that he’s probably not going to come back. [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
[MUSIC IN]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
[MUSIC UP]
Bookman, Narrating: 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 Sgt. 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.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Bookman: We can stand here, it's fine with me. Is everybody comfortable with that?
Debbie-Ann Valente: We can all sit! The floors are clean. Shall we sit? I prefer to sit.
Bookman: You want to sit on the floor? Sure. [FADES UNDER]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Valente: [FADES UP] No, no, no, no, no! I don’t want, I don’t want my feet, um, where you are. It’s rude to have my feet in your face! [LAUGHS] But I can’t bear my legs… [FADES UNDER]
[MUSIC IN]
Bookman, Narrating: Debbie’s daughter Sabrina is here, too because Sabrina is the one who actually first found Tibbs. But Debbie does most of the talking.
Valente: Here, um… If you go down the stairs we came in on? There's a back parking area. He was there.
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Bookman: And what did he look like?
Valente: Aww, I'll show you pictures. A very– 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.
[MUSIC OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Sabrina Rahme: The cat– The records did say that the cat didn't have any microchip…
Valente, Off Mic: Oh yes.
Rahme: …It wasn't spayed. There was no collar or anything on the cat when it was found…
Valente, Off Mic: There you go.
Rahme: …so, there was no way of us tracing where it could have belonged.
Valente: 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 prolonging 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 reach–” and they did all the tests.
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Valente: 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.
[MUSIC IN]
Bookman, Narrating: 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.
Bookman: How would you describe his personality?
Valente: Very gentle, very s– loved getting petted. You had to be careful when you petted him though, ‘cause 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, rub him. You couldn't pet him normally.
Bookman, Narrating: When Debbie and Sabrina first found Tibbs on June 7th, 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.
Valente: I'm asking people – everybody I see, talk to in the neighborhood ‘cause we work there. You know, telling people we found this cat. And one lady says, [GASPS] “I know that–” She saw the picture. She goes, “I know that cat!”
Bookman, Narrating: “That cat,” the lady says to Debbie, “I think he lives in the house next door.” Like, right next door.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: Friday afternoon, June 28th. Debbie leaves work, walks the maybe 30 feet 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.
Garcia: [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE UP] Around 2 to 3 p.m., she comes knock on my door Friday, tells me that she has, she's had my cat for the last three weeks, and, uh, she's paid $6,000 in medical bills, and they don't know what's wrong with him.
Bookman: Did you know who she was?
Garcia: I did, yeah, and you know, I knew because she's the landlord from this place. [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: Rose points to the building Debbie owns. She says she’s seen her across the yard. But they don’t formally meet til that Friday, on Rose’s porch.
Rose remembers that she thanked Debbie, thanked her for taking care of Tibbs and for taking him to the vet. Debbie’s memory of this conversation though… quite different.
Valente: She came out. She said it was her cat. So, I said, “Well, what's wrong with your cat? Because I'm doing all these tests on your cat and it would save your cat 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.
Bookman, Narrating: 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…
Garcia: [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE UP] She asked me if I wanted my cat back. She was 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. Uh, 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.” [OUTSIDE SOUNDS FADE OUT]
Bookman, Narrating: Okay. Rose is left with the impression that Debbie was going to 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, 9-56 p.m., Rose calls Debbie and Debbie picks up.
Garcia: And then she said, um, “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 fuck 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 you're doing something nice…” And she's like, “I don't have to do anything for you!” And then, 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. Like, my whole world turned upside down.
[MUSIC IN]
Bookman, Narrating: Sgt. 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. “Hashtag-Justice-For-Tibbs” is born. The internet has decided to weigh in. Was Sgt. Tibbs rescued or stolen?
That’s next time on part two of “The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs.”
[MUSIC UP]
“The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs” is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
[MUSIC OUT]
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