LITTLE ROCK—Socks, a one-time stray cat who roamed the lawns of the Arkansas governor’s mansion just Bill Clinton became president, has returned home for his final rest.

Officials spread a portion of the cat’s ashes in the mansion’s west flower garden during a private ceremony in March. Attending the ceremony were Linda Dixon of the Clinton Presidential Library and Arkansas’ first lady Ginger Beebe, who read a poem she wrote in honor the cat.

“When (the Clintons) lived at the mansion that’s where Socks hung out, on the back porch there,” mansion administrator Ron Maxwell told Stephens Media.

A small plaque off a porch outside of the mansion’s kitchen now honors the cat. The small urn that carried the cat’s ashes are now at the Clinton Presidential Library along the Arkansas River in Little Rock.

Born in 1989, Socks was adopted by the Clintons in 1991 after he jumped into the arms of Chelsea Clinton while she was leaving the house of her piano teacher in Little Rock. Chelsea Clinton’s pet first appeared in the news in November 1992 after then-Gov. Bill Clinton won the presidency and the family was still in the governor’s mansion.

After the Clintons left the White House, Socks lived with Bill Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, in Hollywood, Md.

—From Staff, Wire Reports