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Gumbo the dog died last month, but not before teaching us something about our city. He had an owner, but he belonged to everyone who knew him.

So charismatic was Gumbo’s life the The Advocate wrote a feature about him in 2004 when he needed chemotherapy. A donation jar to help cover cancer treatment was set out on the counter at Capital Grocery, Gumbo’s home away from home.

Gumbo was a real-life Tramp. He ate well, dining on meatballs from Mortorano’s (before it closed), table scraps from Faye’s, and whatever Barry Dandreano happened to be cooking up for lunch at Capital Grocery. He was such a regular visitor to Faye’s that the owner swears Gumbo understood Korean.

Gumbo maintained personal relationships with retirees, lawyers, doctors, homeless people, college students, dishwashers and company presidents. One day, a large, late-model sedan, the spooky kind with blacked-out windows that movie mob guys drive, rolled to a stop in Spanish Town, the back door opened slightly, Gumbo trotted out, and the car drove mysteriously off.

Gumbo’s official owner was 225 photographer Brian Baiamonte, who plucked the scrawny little fella from a litter at the LSU vet school while on an assignment for LSU’s Gumbo yearbook. Gumbo used to wait patiently outside his owner’s LSU classes, and at night he’d sneak into bars like the Bayou where he’d sniff out his owner in the leggy darkness.

About the only person Gumbo had a quarrel with was the postman. But even they worked it out: the postman stuffed the mail into a larger envelope and hurled the thing onto the porch, and Gumbo was ok with that.

Gumbo accompanied his owner on a year-long, cross-country adventure that included a two-week stint working at Yellowstone National Park, where dogs were not allowed. No problem. Workers took turns sheltering Gumbo. “The head honcho of the lodge knew there was a dog,” Baiamonte recalls, “but he never found him because everybody kept him safe.”

Gumbo died April 11 on his favorite napping spot on the sofa. As it happens, he died on the same day as writer Kurt Vonnegut, who was 84. Gumbo was 14, which vets tell us is roughly 72 in human years.

Gumbo’s friends were of every race, color and income bracket, and they may not all have known each other, but they did know what a cool cat Gumbo was.

Vonnegut himself would have appreciated that.