Books and cats – a gentle memoir of ‘the ideal job’ and two lovable cats

Libraries and librarians are an endangered species and this honest, thoughtful memoir carries a nostalgic whiff of lost pleasures for bookworms like me ('patrons' as Jan terms us). Dewey classification card indexes, complaints about noise (in this case the librarians giggling), and the weird things readers use as bookmarks, all brought back memories of times when I escaped to a stack of books, in many different local libraries. I was never lucky enough to find a library with cats or – like Jan, the narrator - I might have never left the place.

Although Jan is self-effacing, her dedication to both her work and her cats shines through, and the consideration she gives her patrons, however odd their behaviour, goes way beyond recommending books or solving a research question. We see the stars of the book, two Scottish fold cats named Baker and Taylor, through Jan’s loving eyes and any animal-lover will enjoy the anecdotes that imbue shoelaces and melons with special significance. As a photographer, I particularly enjoyed the ill-fated professional shoots trying to nail the images for the Baker and Taylor firm’s incredibly successful campaign featuring ‘their’ library cats.

Interspersed throughout the story are ‘interviews’ with other library cats and the underlying message of the book is that cats can bring libraries (and other institutions) to life; and what this involves in practical terms. I was fascinated by the ways Jan had to protect the cats from their own fame and how she became their agent, writing on their behalf to the fans, especially one teacher’s second-grade pupils, who learned literacy skills via mail to – and from – the cats.

The term ‘therapy animal’ was not common in the 1980s but that is exactly what came across to me – many of us humans need pets to do what Baker and Taylor did for Jan – to make us smile again. That’s what this book did for me – it made me smile and be glad that once upon a time, there were two cats who lived in a library…