In case you missed it, last Saturday was International Cat Day, during which "felines take over the internet (even more than usual)," the Telegraph noted. As news-gathering organizations go, our bookstore cat coverage is pretty comprehensive, so we can testify to the clickbait potential inherent in any hyperlink that includes the words "Bookstore Cats."
See, you just went there instinctively, didn't you? Welcome back.
Today, I have the honor of both inventing and announcing the inaugural International Cat Day Bookstore Prize winner. From a long list of worthy contenders, the judges (well, me) unanimously selected Tales of the Lonesome Pine, Big Stone Gap, Va., which is currently hosting a Bookstore Cat Adoption Reunion on Facebook to celebrate all of the "forever homes" they have found for their temporary bookstore kitty interns.
"We started in June 2009, and in May of this year we adopted out our 200th cat (named Reepicheep)," said co-owner Wendy Welch. "The bookstore is a great place to get adoptions going because it acts kind of like a pet store window; people interact with the cats, pick them up and carry them, have fun with them. The tactile experience of being around them has increased adoptions, I think. We still have 'impulse' adoptions, although we are careful of those. More often now that we're established we have people contact us after viewing our Facebook photos."
Tales of the Lonesome Pine has three cat adoption rules, Welch noted: "Let the cat choose the person--they never miss; give the cats timely literary names (we named a group Harper Lee, Scout, and Boo Radley when Go Set a Watchman came out); and write about their purrsonailities on Facebook. After a cat's been with us long enough to know them, I usually do a 'if this cat were a woman/girl' post and for some reason everybody loves these. I also write a lot of 'cat voice' blogs as if the cat were writing it about his experiences at the shop. These get lots of hits and comments."
Visitors to the bookstore occasionally donate money ("a kitty for the kitties," as her husband, Jack, describes it), but Welch said, "We don't have a jar out and in our troubled economic region I would flat not ask people for money; there are people struggling to feed their families here, literally. We're not interested in taking their cash. In fact, that's who we rescue for. Some families would love a pet, be good to it, have enough to feed and care for it, if they didn't have to pay for spaying and neutering. I have friends who can sometimes be called on to 'sponsor' a family if they need it, and we let those 'kitty' donations add up to spays as well."
She also crochets for the cause: "It's a hobby I've had since childhood; I'm fast, and if I do say so myself, I'm really good at it. I can make all sorts of fun stuff; in 2013 it was the Spay & Neuter Afghan--a free online pattern called 'Rows of Cats.' I put it online with a note that said 'This is what you get if you don't spay and neuter: rows and rows of cats.' And those things sold like hotcakes; I sold them for the price of a neuter. In 2014 I must have sold 400 of these cool little trivets shaped like penguins and chicks and roosters. This year it is animal scarves and hoodies, and mermaid tail lap blankets. People buy these a lot, and they donate yarn so I can sell them at prices everyone can afford, and still make money for the kitties' kitty."
Since the 2012 publication of her book The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, Welch said many readers "from outside the area have been quick to assist us, or to assist their local cat shelters in our honor. That's very cool. The farthest away we have adopted cats is Kansas and Massachusetts. Someone agreed to meet the adopter halfway, and off our babies went to life in the big city--or the American plains. Whichever. We adopted a girl recently to a family in Arlington who came to see the shop because they'd read my book and wanted to see it for themselves. And they came with the idea of getting a cat in mind. We love it when this happens."
Tales of The Lonesome Pine's official bookshop cat philosophy is summed up nicely in her book: "The whole establishment catered in design and policy to every whim of the two permanent staff cats and the myriad fosters who have found forever homes via the bookstore."
Sometimes people ask why they do all this. "We do it for the same reason we run a bookstore: because it's fun, because it's important, and because it's compassionate," Welch observed. "Animals can't speak for themselves, tell their own story. They need advocates, and when they get them, they reciprocate by being way more fun to watch than Netflix--plus more engaging." --Robert Gray, contributing editor (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
