> DsPet can you rip and email me Rovers textures (from the loading screen) if not Ill just try to recreate him.
The "special" NPCs use very different texture mapping.
If interested, here are special models ripped into a similar (but mostly unusable) format:
http://aibohack.com/wii/special_characters.zip
Read the README.TXT for a name guide (eg: SPEC00 is Rover, SPEC01 is Joan, ...)
They require significant editing to work as regular NPCs. You need to make the special textures fit into the size and layout of the "Export Textures".

For example, the Rover model ("SPEC00") is a cat, but has has a totally different body layout than the regular NPC cats (like Moe). The eyes and mouth are totally different (Rover only has half his face/head, but the regular cat model has both sides).
As suggested, you may be better of starting with Moe (or any of the other normal cats), and moving over the colors and artwork from the SPEC?? bitmaps.