If you have ever spent any time with cats, you know there are basically two kinds.
There's the kind that live their lives like they're the literal reincarnation of David Bowie, sitting on the end of the couch making deliberate attempts to avoid eye contact but never actually leaving you alone; like they want you to know they're there but also that they're ignoring you for reasons that are too complex for your tiny human mind to contemplate.
And then there are the guys who, at any given moment, could be only about a half genetic step removed from a sweet potato; the himbos of the domestic animal kingdom. The kind of guys you could imagine seeing photographed next to a sign that says "Days since I've had an accident: 0".
This is a story about the second kind, and it starts about two weeks ago when the leaflets started arriving in the letter boxes.
The search for Tibbles - the missing Maine - was branching out.
You would know Tibbles if you saw him; he's about the size of a small dog; he's chunky and fluffy and has a semi-vacant expression like he's trying to do long division in his head (bless).
Somehow, Tibbles (full name: Tiberius, as in Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise) had got himself lost from his home at Carey Bay on Lake Macquarie and, being the gentle but somewhat simple guy that he is, his loving owner feared he may have got himself into some mischief.
When the leaflet arrived in her mailbox, Nia Bousles, who lives a few doors down from Tibbles, thought immediately of her own ragdoll kitten Floofy, who is just over a year old.
"We always had cats in the family growing up," she said, "They have been a part of my life forever and they bring such joy ... but the cat does what the cat wants to do."
She tucked the leaflet away, resolving to keep an eye out for Tibbles, but it seemed he had made off without a trace.
"We were all kind of invested in this cat that had gone missing," she said.
A fortnight passed and there was still no sign of Tibbles until late Thursday afternoon when there was a break in the case.
From Nia's dining room table, where she sits for an afternoon cup of tea, she caught sight of a flash in the window of her neighbour's garage.
"It was a beautiful day," she said, "The sun was shining - positive energy - good things must have been happening because I caught a slight movement in the window. It was a bit dark, but I knew they didn't have an animal. And then it moved - or did it move?"
For a second, Nia thought it could be her neighbour (who, she mentioned, wears a bouffant hair-do) but if it was, they weren't moving around very much.
"I thought they're taking a long time just looking out the window," Nia said, "Looking at me? Or just daydreaming about the future? No, something else had to be going on here."
Nia's 10-year-old son, Andrew, was enlisted to investigate - which he did, in a very 10-year-old kind of way.
"He walked halfway down the driveway and came back," Nia laughed, "I took it upon myself to have a bit of a closer look."
(I think we can all see where this is going.)
"I thought, that is a very familiar face," Nia said. "And my neighbours don't have a cat."
Perched in the window, with a look that seemed to scream "It's been 84 years ...", was Tibbles.
"Tibbles has been found," Nia narrated triumphantly, "He couldn't go anywhere; he had got himself locked in the garage for three weeks, and now he's looking out at me like he's trying to make a connection - 'Someone ... please ... let me out!'."
Tibbles' owner was called and the pair were soon reunited, but there's an enduring secret here that it's possible only Tibbles knows; how on earth did he get himself stuck inside the garage in the first place?
Nia's neighbours were away at the time he was found, and even if the garage door was open (it wasn't) the upstairs landing where Tibbles was is behind a second locked door that we're told hadn't been opened since before his disappearance.
How did he get in? No one, except Tibbles it would seem, knows.
But after three weeks in solitary confinement, Tiberius was set free and sent home for a good feed and a lie down, where his owner - a former veterinarian, we're told - has assured Nia he is in good spirits.
"Tibbles is doing well," she told us late on Friday afternoon, after his owner dropped by with a hamper of wine and home-made honey to share after the ordeal.
He "ate like a horse" when he arrived home but, in keeping with his himbo spirit, Tibbles appears to be thoroughly ambivalent about his epic Ulyssean adventure through suburbia.
All's well that ends well.
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