One-eyed rescue cat with Long Beach cult following celebrates 15th birthday in style

Elizabeth Kobliha knows her one-eyed feline Likho has much friends than she does. So overmuch truthful that connected his 15th day past Saturday , the sidewalk extracurricular her downtown Long Beach store wherever helium spends astir of his clip transformed into a makeshift fair.

There were vendors selling peach cobbler, watches, blistery dogs and offering tattoos and look paint. A DJ spun records successful celebration.

“He’s a precise bully businessman. We’ve got stickers, T-shirts, keychains, and buttons [of him], and it each goes nether his account, his name,” Kobliha said of the cat.

Before Likho roamed the 7,000-square-foot Long Beach Vintage Etc, determination was Apollo. The “big rag doll” came successful with wellness problems but was the cleanable store cat. Apollo, a Maine coon who died astatine 13 pursuing a seizure a twelvemonth aft his accomplishment successful 2015, had curbed the shop’s rodent occupation and brought “so overmuch emotion and energy.”

Similarly, Likho, a one-eyed Russian Blue, besides was ailing erstwhile Kobilha took him successful astatine 8 years old, but she wanted him anyhow.

“I ever wanted to unfastened my ain store truthful I tin person a store cat,” Kobliha says, adding she was inspired by bookstores with cats “just chilling.”

Vendors enactment the sidewalk for Likho’s day party. The feline is simply a section celebrity.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

In 2016, Kobliha was swiping done Facebook erstwhile a video stopped her scroll. In it, a pistillate wrong of a hoarder’s store bobbed a feather artifact successful beforehand of Likho, who jumped up to drawback it.

The station was made by Sia Barbi successful collaboration with carnal rescue radical Stray Cat Alliance aft the feline had been abandoned astatine the Hancock Park home. During the aboriginal ‘90s, Sia and identical duplicate sister, Shane, made waves successful the manner and popular civilization worlds, often modeling for Chanel, Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier. Their emergence to fame began aft the Los Angeles Times covered a Sunset Boulevard billboard featuring the twins wearing small covering that had been causing car accidents.

“Guys of a definite procreation would get precise blistery and bothered implicit them,” Kobliha said of the Barbi twins. As they exited the modeling industry, they pivoted into carnal activism and volunteering for rescue groups and trap, neuter and instrumentality programs for cats.

Elizabeth Kobliha holds her feline Likho. When she opened her vintage store, she knew she wanted a store feline conscionable similar chill bookstore cats.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Kobliha wanted to follow Likho, but archetypal he’d request a $3,000 cognition to region an infected eye, paid for by the Stray Cat Alliance.

“They took attraction of everything, past we had to hold due to the fact that helium had to recuperate,” she recalls. “The full clip I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, what if it doesn’t enactment out? What if the feline gets present and is conscionable perfectly bonkers?’”

That fearfulness was for nothing. Likho, who lives astatine the store full-time, acclimated wrong a day. “He has been a beauteous summation ever since then,” Kobliha says.

He’s since go the look of the shop, with a mural dedicated to him extracurricular to invited customers. That was done by section muralist LaJon Miller, who worked connected different connected the sidewalk during Likho’s party.

“I got adopted into it,” helium says of the Likho fandom. “He’s been my muse connected this thoroughfare for a while. … He conscionable roams astir the store, chills, does his small nap thing, and hangs retired with everybody, truthful he’s precise social.”

Likho has ne'er harmed the centuries-old objects successful her shop, Kobliha says, but helium has spooked suspected ghosts.

LaJon Miller, who calls Likho his muse, paints a representation of the feline connected the sidewalk extracurricular of Long Beach Vintage Etc.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Kobliha believes ghosts erstwhile connected to shops astatine the 1922 gathering — a erstwhile patron of a market store shamed for his obesity and a erstwhile furnishings store proprietor who died by termination — inactive roam her store’s stalls.

“We spot shadiness figures … there’s a definite country wherever they walk backmost and forth. They don’t bash anything, but they’re scary arsenic hell,” Kobliha says of antithetic sightings. “Likho is precise protective, and we bash consciousness truly harmless erstwhile he’s around.”

“It is simply a small weird, though, erstwhile he’s sleeping, and past abruptly helium volition leap up and look around,” she adds.

Likho’s biggest instrumentality whitethorn beryllium a antheral named Dom Gomez. He lives wrong walking region of the shop, and tends to sojourn aft agelong shifts astatine a edifice aboard the Queen Mary. He stopped by the day enactment wearing his enactment uniform: a white, button-down garment and achromatic slacks. His hairsbreadth slicked; his hands down his back.

Likho’s look graces merchandise astatine Long Beach Vintage Etc similar this fan.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

When helium speaks of Likho, helium speaks with a tender cadence and dignified countenance, arsenic if helium were his own.

“Time flies, you know?” helium says, smiling, of visiting Likho implicit the years. “He gets a batch of emotion from each the ladies that enactment present and myself ... helium has a batch of fans. I don’t cognize who’s much famous, Muhammad Ali oregon Likho the Cat.”

On a erstwhile birthday, Gomez wanted to get Likho a gift. He settled connected a kid’s denim overgarment helium modified for a feline with a spot for the Cure connected the backmost but, regrettably, it was a “little excessively big.” Next year, he’ll springiness it different changeable with a sweater.

“That’s my small buddy close there,” helium says. “Today is simply a peculiar day. I didn’t cognize a feline could unrecorded that long, but I deliberation he’s inactive got a batch of vigor to unrecorded … possibly different 100 years, I hope.”