After nearly 90,000 votes, meet the two winners of the Sun Herald’s Cutest Cat contest

What’s better than one cute cat? Two cute cats.

And after nearly 90,000 votes from Sun Herald subscribers in our Cutest Cat poll, we are naming two winners: Caesar and Bebe.

Caesar, who is Katherine Kingren’s 12-year-old boy, finished with more than 33,000 votes across three rounds of competition. He also finished in first place in each of the first two rounds.

Caesar is a bit of a celebrity in his Heron Bayou neighborhood in Ocean Springs, according to Kingren. She says he greets children at the bus stop in front of the Kingren home each school day, demanding that walkers pet him.

It is “the duty of his subjects to give him the appropriate level of attention,” Kingren said.

Bebe, who came to Melissa Galatas as a “terrified little stray” picked up support throughout the contest, finishing with better than 20% of the vote in the first two rounds before matching Caesar’s support in the final round.

Galatas says Bebe began life as a feral kitten, whose mother was killed by another animal. She said it took weeks to get Bebe to trust her enough to come into her house and nine months before he would let her pet him.

“While Bebe the Brave is still a little scared sometimes, he’s thriving,” Galatas said.

The Sun Herald’s Cutest Cat contest was a non-scientific poll of subscribers, who could vote as many times as they wanted.