Bubba's Origin Story: How Our All-Star Cat Found Us

Aug 23, 2026

It was fall of 2018, maybe late October, and we had just gotten home from errands. We were unloading packages when we noticed a cat sitting in the driveway. Unlike most strays, he wasn't scared — he sat there like it was his own castle. He wouldn't come to us, but he wasn't running away either. We brought the packages inside, unloaded them, and went back out. He'd moved, but only within the same general area — the corner of the driveway, with a clean shot to the woods if he needed it, but still out in the open where anyone at the front of the house could see him. He wasn't hiding. He was just ready to bolt if he had to. Now, we weren't in the market for another cat. We already had OG Pinky and SweatPea, plus four large dogs. But we're animal people, and a strange cat wandering our little rural neighborhood wasn't normal. If you've got a hundred houses on small lots nearby, sure, a new cat shows up now and then. But our house is one of eighteen on a small dead-end road, nowhere near another neighborhood. A cat just appearing didn't add up. So we went back out with some wet food, fresh water, and a few Nugs — but instead of leaving it on the porch, we sat down on the walkway, in a warm, sunny spot. Within a minute or two it was clear he could smell it. He got up, took a few steps closer, and sat back down like he still owned the place. We stayed quiet, food between us and him. A few more walk-a-bits and sits, and within a few short minutes he came to the bowls. What was interesting was that he went for the water before the food. It wasn't a hot day, or even a particularly sunny one — just a nice fall afternoon. Most stray or feral cats are close to starving, and they go for the food first. The fact that he — we're purposely not using his adopted name yet — went for the water told us something: he'd probably never known real food insecurity. Good for him. That said, once he'd had his fill at the water bowl, he dug into the wet food with real enthusiasm, pausing once to glance up and make sure the three of us hadn't made a move toward him. When he'd eaten his fill and had another drink, we started talking to him, and within a few minutes he was in our laps, purring hard. He didn't know us. But he knew he was safe with us. He cleaned himself right there, then laid down close by. It was clear he wasn't just there for the food — he was looking for help. A few days went by. We drove through three neighborhoods looking for "missing cat" posters. Nothing. It was late October, not spring — the leaves had already started turning, and a cold front was moving in fast. We started quietly wondering how much longer we could leave a bowl on the porch before the weather made the decision for us. Then he disappeared for a full day. We figured he'd left us, and we were bummed — but we were also thinking about him, and about whoever his people might be. Maybe he'd found his way home. We were selfishly happy when he came back the next day, but sad for him too. Our theory: he tried to find his way back home. There are acres — miles, really — of woods behind our house before you hit the next country road, streams included. It's not unreasonable he could've gotten turned around out there; it's not common, but it happens. Or he could've been dropped off by a car — which, as awful as it is to think about, is a real and documented pattern: people abandon pets in remote spots specifically because there's nowhere for them to follow. If that's what happened, he might have wandered back to that road, only to find there was nowhere left to go. Of course, we don't actually know. But we were happy to see him again. After that missing day, with the cold weather closing in, we broke. We floated the idea that maybe he could be a "basement cat." The OGs had the run of upstairs, and while the dogs were in the house during the day, they slept in the attached garage under the house at night — all rescues, but two of them were true trauma rescues: Baby and Bear. At the time the office was in the basement, so it was the obvious place to try him out as a house cat. To this day, we don't actually know his story. But we think he was someone's cat — either abandoned, or lost — and pretty recently, not a stray who'd been living wild a while. Which is exactly why we hesitated to bring him inside. What if his family was out there right now, driving around panicked, looking for him? What if he was a boy cat doing the wandering thing, but actually knew his way home? The weather was still nice enough, and we still had four dogs and three cats, and — bringing in an unknown adult cat, one who might belong to somebody else, felt like it deserved more thought than we were giving it standing in the driveway. But by then it didn't really matter what we decided out there. He'd already decided for us. So he moved into the basement — bed, litter box, food and water, the whole starter kit. We kept him separate from the OGs and the dogs at first, more out of caution than any real plan. It didn't last long. Within a few days the introductions started happening almost on their own — a nose under the door, a paw through the gate, that kind of thing. There was some hissing, a few standoffs, the usual startled-cat theater — but nothing that ever felt serious. He wasn't looking for a fight. He'd already told us that much in the driveway. And within those same few days, it was clear nobody was coming for him. No calls, no posters, no truck rolling slowly down our dead-end road looking for a lost cat. Whatever his story was — lost, dropped off, wandered too far from home — he wasn't going back to it. He was ours now, whether we'd fully agreed to that in the driveway or not. He needed a name. We went through the usual rounds of suggestions, most of which didn't stick the way a name has to stick. The one that did wasn't fancy — Bubba is the nickname of one of our best friends, and somehow it just fit. Solid, easygoing, comfortable in his own skin. Once we said it out loud a few times, there wasn't much of a decision left to make. He was Bubba.