Podcast asks if a cat’s death can crumble a politically significant community
The Final Days of Sgt Tibbs explores what happens when the internet’s love of cats – and drama – intersects with very real lives
Few places are as significant in the American political landscape as New Hampshire.
Every time a presidential election rolls around, the state becomes the obsessive focus of candidates, pollsters and the global media. An entire season premiere of acclaimed political drama The West Wing was consumed by vision of fictional candidates pounding the Granite State’s snowy streets.
But this fixation isn’t a product of New Hampshire’s political influence – the state has just four electoral college votes. Compare that with California or Texas, which have 54 and 40 votes respectively.
Rather, everyone gets hyped for New Hampshire because of a bit of constitutional admin that means it’s been the location of one of the first presidential primary votes for more than a century. And it’s often said that the way Iowa and New Hampshire go, so goes the rest of the nation.
With the 2024 Democratic and Republican primaries locked away in January, New Hampshire voters were free to kick back until the big dance in November.
But come the northern hemisphere’s summer, a different kind of battle was brewing – this one about a 19-year-old cat called Sergeant Tibbs.
Given his age, the Maine Coon’s death can hardly be called untimely.
But the circumstances of his passing, well, that’s hotly debated.
The final days of Sergeant Tibbs are documented in a podcast investigation called, appropriately, The Final Days of Sgt Tibbs.
Across four episodes, reporter and host Todd Bookman unravels what happens when the internet’s love of cats – and drama – intersects with the very real lives of Tibbs’ human, Rose Garcia, and her neighbour, Debbie-Ann Valente.
Valente is accused by Garcia of stealing Sergeant Tibbs and subjecting him to the stress that would ultimately cause his death.
Garcia is accused by Valente of neglecting her ailing feline pet, whom she selflessly nursed back to relative health, and at great expense.
Bookman – a senior reporter for NPR offshoot New Hampshire Public Radio whose usual round includes the fallout from President Donald Trump’s sweeping steel and aluminium tariffs, and cryptocurrency scams – acknowledges the strangeness of this assignment.
But this isn’t just a story about a cat, large though he may loom in the lives of Garcia and Valente.
This is a story about community. About grief, activism and justice. So, with that in mind, perhaps Bookman would say it’s right in his wheelhouse.
Every ounce of NPR’s rich podcasting history is on display in The Final Days of Sgt Tibbs, too – Bookman’s vocal cadence is so similar to that of Serial host Sarah Koenig that, at times, I felt transported back to late 2014, when I devoured all of that game-changing first season on the seven-hour drive to my parents’ home. Even the score of Sgt Tibbs is Serial-esque.
At under 90 minutes total, The Final Days of Sgt Tibbs is unlikely to sustain you for that kind of voyage, but it’s entertaining and engaging nonetheless – a shining example of the human-interest journalism that America’s public radio broadcaster has done so well and for so long.
Kristen Amiet is the producer of The Australian’s daily news podcast The Front. The Final Days of Sgt Tibbs is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.
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