Cats make for some excellent companions, both in and out of books.
The books below all feature feline friends readers will want to cozy right up with. So grab a blanket, make a warm beverage of choice, pick up one of these books, and, for bonus points, enjoy them with your own favorite feline in your lap.
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
Nana the cat doesn't know why he's going on a road trip with his beloved owner, Satoru. The pair drives around Japan throughout the year visiting Satoru's old friends, including a brusque farmer, a couple that runs a pet-friendly B&B, and a widower who just lost his cat-loving wife. They even meet a special dog who forces Nana to reassess her disdain of his species. This book is a heart-rending story about friendship across species as Nana learns the true meaning behind this extended trip.
The Cat Who Saved Books by SÅsuke Natsukawa
High school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the used bookstore he inherited from his bookworm grandfather when a cat named Tiger appears with a strange request: he needs Natsuki's help to save books. The world is full of lonely books left unread by their owners, and it is now this pair's duty to liberate those books from their neglectful owners. They enter mazes, meet book-owers who are unwittingly torturing their books or leaving them to gain dust, and must face a final challenge to a realm where only the bravest may enter.
How many lives can one cat touch? This true story of a library cat in a small American town is one any book and cat lover should read. A few-week-old cat was stuffed into the book return slot at the Spencer, Iowa, Library. The next morning, he was found by Library Director Vicki Myron, who survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare and an alcoholic husband. The cat, whom she named Dewey Readmore Books, won the hearts of Myron and her staff. As Dewey became a source of warmth and pride for this small struggling community, he grew to fame around the world.
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun
This book is less heartwarming than the others, but this mystery series featuring an investigative reporter and an unlikely feline sidekick are sure to scratch the itch of any cat lover. In this first installment, reporter Jim Qwillerman is newly back to his job by covering the art scene. He accepts an apartment offer with the newspaper's resident art critic, the notoriously harsh and enemy-ridden George Bonifield Mountclemens. It's also where he meets Koko, a male Siamese cat who can apparently read backwards. The books that follow in this series feature the man and cat duo as they travel around and help solve the crimes they come across — the first of which in this book is the death of Koko's owner, Mountclemens.
