“The Cat Who Came for Christmas, by Cleveland Amory,” c 1987 is a wonderful book to read. I often pick up this book to a page I’ve marked (it’s my book), and think about a passage like the one on page 76 that tells us that President Abraham Lincoln found three half-frozen kittens at another politician’s house, and he “adopted them on the spot and took them back to the White House.”

I love reading books about cats, and suppose that’s because I have three cats. I know how important cats and dogs are for families of people. When I’m in Cottonwood, I always see dogs on the street on the leash held by someone. Cats are often indoor pets, so I don’t always see many of them, except when I’m on the highway in my car and need to avoid running into a cat crossing the road.

“Really Important Stuff My Cat Has Taught Me,” is by Cynthia L. Copeland, c 2017. A smaller part of the title is “Life is more fun with a partner in crime.” The author’s cat is Phoebe, who’s 12 years old.

The first of the seven chapters is “Be the Exception.” So we read about the different personalities cats have, and see many photographs. One example is “Don’t be a copy cat,” and the picture is of a small kitten with a large rabbit. They are laying next to each other. On page 13 we see that this book will teach us a lot about famous people who have cats. Page 12 is a photo of the author Colette holding her cat (or one of her cats). She lived in Paris, and at the time of her aging, she was comforted being with her cats.

Another fun photo in this chapter shows a woman playing the piano. A cat is sitting on a book on the piano keys, and it looks like the cat is singing, too. Toward the end of the chapter is a photo of a cat laying on a donkey’s back!

Chapter 2 is “Take It All In,” and the idea is that sometimes cats need to enjoy being alone.

The next book about cats I’ve been reading is “Life Works Itself Out (and Then You Nap),” by Keiya Mizuno & Naoki Naganuma, c 2013. The introductory quote for the book is by Charles M Schulz: “If you ever lose your way, the best thing to do is to follow a cat.”

This book has seven categories, and the introduction tells me that I didn’t have to begin with the first part. I’ll start with Number Four: RELAX. Each of the five color photographs is across from a text to read. The title of the first one is “Just Loosen Up the Shoulders.” The written description is about Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), who would play the violin when he needed to rest up from his scientific work. Below the paragraph about Einstein, we read three quotes from world-wide artists. One of them is Eugene Delacroix, French artist (1798-1863): “Eat a little, drink a little, and then take a quick rest. That is the panacea for the whole world” (p. 80). The color picture on the next page is of a gray cat with white paws and a white mouth. Looking at the reader, the cat is resting, but his (or her) eyes look like what’s going on is thinking about what he/she sees.

The next book title is “Second-Chance Cats: True Stories of the Cats We Rescue and the Cats Who Rescue Us,” Edited by Callie Smith Grant, c 2020. This book has 33 chapters, and each one is by a different writer. The length of the chapters go from four pages to 10 pages. The first story, five pages long, is “Lady Finds A Lap,” by Lonnie Hall DuPont.

The lap Lady finds at the end of the story is the lap of an elderly grandmother who lived alone. She buys Lady a “new rhinestone collar” (p. 19). Before the success of that home, the cat had been brought into another home by the Tom cat who lived there. Lady was “a big, beautiful Tuxedo cat with round topaz eyes rimmed in her natural black eyeliner” (p. 17). The daughter in the home with Lady during the winter when her parents went south, knew she needed to find a new home for the cat, and she did.

I will read more books about cats.

Cat-lovers can find many titles to purr-use at the Marshall-Lyon County Library! Care, feeding, and types of cats are found in 636.8; Life with cats, essays in the 818s; Big cats in the 599s. Mysteries featuring cats abound: “The Cat Who” series by Lillian Jackson Braun; “Magical Cats” by Sophie Kelly; “Cats in Trouble” by Leann Sweeney and many others. Find them at marshalllyonlibrary.org or ask a librarian: 507-537-7003.