“We’ve had a number of cats over the years, but lost several to old age. So we decided we wanted to get a cat that wasn’t as adoptable. You know, everyone wants kittens; but we said let’s get an older cat. So we went to a rescue in Albany and found Nipsy. He came home, and he... he just really gets along with everyone.

We got him as an adult, so it’s hard to tell how old he is. He’s definitely had a tough life.  He was a rescue. He was the only survivor of a house fire. He was taken from a hoarding situation. He’s got a little kink in his tail, and he's missing an ear. Last year, we found a mass and thought we were going to have to put him to sleep, but it turned out—thank God—it was just an inflammation. As far as I can tell, he’s just trying to enjoy the rest of his life as happily as possible. There’s a nice Amazon box upstairs he likes to sleep in. He loves our neighbor’s deck more than anything else, so when we’re done here he’s going to go stretch out back there. He’s just a sweet old man.

We have a connected back yard, and he was hanging out back there once. I checked on him after a while, but couldn’t find him and didn’t know what happened. It turns out that he had come out the alley and walked around front, and he was sitting here photobombing a wedding shoot that was going on at the plaza down the way. And we only found out about it later because someone sent us a picture asking, ‘Is this your cat?’”