Bob Newhart Cat, or just Bob to those who knew him well, had been a fixture at Recycle Bookstore in Campbell since 2010. He died this month, and I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone who ever encountered his furry, orange face and inquisitive eyes was sad about it.

The bookstore’s Aug. 5 post announcing Bob’s passing garnered more than 750 reactions, 150 likes and just as many shares. The outpouring of love, memories and photographs on Facebook would lead you to think everyone had lost a close relative or their own family pet. And, in a way, they did.

“He was truly a citizen of Campbell with a big gorgeous personality,” said Stacy Carlon, who manages Recycle Bookstore on Campbell Avenue. “My husband found him wandering a store in Gilroy that was having a pet fair and said I had to come look at this cat. We had to have him.”

Bob had been returned a couple of times because he didn’t get along with other pets, but he found a home at the bookshop, where he took over the role of official bookstore cat from the beloved ISBN. (Two other cats, Emma and Ender, wander the stacks at Recycle Bookstore’s other location on The Alameda in San Jose.)

Bookstores and cats seem to go together, and if you travel around the country, you’ll find plenty of paws among the paperbacks. There’s a coffee-table book, “Bookstore Cats.” Fodor’s includes a travel guide on its website to bookstores with cats and Bob Newhart Cat himself was featured on a button campaign a few years back celebrating the link between felines and fiction.

“Cats have had a long history in bookstores, dating back to the 19th century, and I think there’s a connection with the personality and vibe that you get from a cat,” Recycle Bookstore co-owner Eric Johnson told me last year. “The luxuriousness of having an infinite amount of time to do what you want to do, to sit down with a book without being disturbed, is exactly the feeling that a cat exudes as well.”

NO WRISTBAND? NO PROBLEM: Downtown visitors looking for a taste of the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest will be able to enjoy at least the sounds of the festival at the courtyard of the Montgomery Theatre on Market and San Carlos streets.

Visit San Jose, the city’s tourism and marketing arm, is opening the expanded courtyard throughout the weekend. It’s outside the festival gates, so you don’t need a wristband, but you should get an earful of the acts on the Sobrato Organization Main Stage in Plaza de Cesar Chavez.

Special menu offerings — plus cocktails, beer and wine — will be available inside the courtyward, allowing Team San Jose to show off the work of its new food and beverage director and sommelier James M.K. Te’o, who previously worked at Bardessono Hotel & Spa in Yountville.

‘RISE’ CONTINUES IN LOS GATOS: “Rise: Empower, Change and Action!,” a thought-provoking exhibit at the Whitney Modern gallery in Los Gatos has been extended through Sept. 9. The juried exhibition features work by 36 artists from around the country — plus 25 more on a looping slideshow — and examines the feminist perspective of a society based on equality for all.

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Art in construction zone will move to new downtown San Jose home More than 200 people visited during the show’s opening weekend in July, and Whitney Modern owner Suzanne Whitney-Smedt said the community response has been overwhelming. “I can’t begin to tell you how many visitors have thanked me personally for bringing such an important conversation to our shared community,” she said.

The gallery at 24 N. Santa Cruz Ave. is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Get more information at www.whitneymodern.com.