Most-Missed Cat

Mookie

Few Richmonders love their neighborhood more than Mookie the tabby loved the Museum District. Back in 2002, when his original owners moved away, Mookie refused to pull up stakes. As many as a dozen times, he strolled two miles along busy roads to get back to his old stomping grounds at Grove and Belmont avenues.

Eventually, Mookie moved back permanently and found new owners in Belmont residents Brooks Godwin and Dave Olli. Each morning he left his house and followed the sunlight from porch to porch, then paused at 3 p.m. to greet the St. Benedict’s schoolchildren as class let out.

When Mookie’s health declined, “he just sat in the sun and went from house to house, very slowly, making his goodbyes,” Godwin says. He died in December at age 19.

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