As a reminder, I am reviewing one book each day until Christmas, in no particular order.
Each choice is special in its own way. All would make great gifts for your cat addicted book lovers. Or your book addicted cat lovers.
Why cat books? Several reasons, really. I adore cats. Cats appear in most of my fiction. And I enjoy promoting cat books for the holidays, because I frequently give or get them as gifts myself. And finally, so many people have a cat, that cat themed gifts are an industry. You can’t go wrong.
Today I am reviewing “Bookstore Cats,” by Brandon Schultz, published in 2017.
One nice thing about some of the independent bookstores that I have visited over the years is the presence of a bookstore cat. There’s something about books and cats that go together. Maybe it’s the hush of the bookstore that fits well with a sleeping cat. Maybe it’s the nooks and crannies. Maybe it’s the clientele who are book readers, and therefore respectful of an animal that needs some solitude, but still enjoys a pat here and there. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. It works.
This book celebrates this bond between bookstores and cats in words and pictures, appropriately. We admire the cats, but we get the stories too. Because we want the stories. Cats from twenty four bookstores are celebrated here. We get the backstory, their current duties, likes and haunts, and wonderful pictures of the felines, of course.
Some of my favorites – if I can even pick – follow. First, Shiva is a mostly white cat with tabby markings at Cat Tales, a bookstore operated by Midwest Pet Refuge, that helps to fund the rescue. There can be over a dozen cats in the store looking for forever homes. Blake, at Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company has been featured in Cat Fancy also. She is a gray tabby with white socks. The Great Catsby is a fluffy tuxedo cat with distinctive facial spots. He works at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, California.
While this book is several years old, I like to think of it as a to see list. If I am ever in these cities – and for me, some are close by, including British Colombia and Portland, Oregon – I will want to stop in and see the cats. If the cat in the book isn’t there – some are in their late teens as of the publication date – I feel certain that there will still be cats to visit.
The photography is candid. The cats are photographed they way they like to spend their days in the shops – in cat beds, in windows, and on counters and shelves. The book intersperses the stories with lists of notable cats in literature – children’s books, YA books, short stories, etc. It also includes a number of poems about cats from figures such as Swinburne and Dickinson.
If you’re shopping for a fan of books and cats, you can’t go wrong in picking this up. And like me, you may want to make it an aspirational to see list for the future. Since this small hardback is not an all inclusive list of bookstore cats, it may inspire you to find shops near you that have one or more resident cats. I know of one in my area already. If you visit for the cats, and just happen to buy some books – because, you know, it’s a bookshop after all – then you’ll be helping an independent bookstore survive.
