Torquemada lives with his sister Helga at the Iliad Book Shop in North Hollywood, California. They were born in 1994 and rescued from an empty lot nearby. Torquemada was named after the head torturer of the Spanish Inquisition. He had a bad habit of beating on his sister, and almost anything else, when he was younger. He still beats on her a little bit, but will also lie down and sleep with her head to head. Both Helga and Torquemada were picked by LA Weekly as two of the best book store cats in LA for 1998. He's not as sociable as his sister, but he'll come around for a good back scratch every now and then.