Libraries have long served as havens for learning, research, and perhaps more importantly, a respite from the noisy hustle and bustle of daily life. I won’t lie, any place where it is generally frowned upon to speak over a certain decibel is a place I’d probably prefer to be. As one of those people who enjoys taking a big ol’ whiff of an old book, I’ve always found a certain sense of calmness whenever I’m in a library, even when I’m trying to cram a boatload of facts into my brain for an upcoming midterm for which I am atrociously ill-prepared. We’ve all been there.

Ah yes, to bathe in the near-total silence, the smell of ink on old paper, and the vague illusion of productivity. What could make a library even better? You guessed it. Is it cats? It is. It’s cats. (It’s always cats.)

Tale As Old As Time

So, we’ve kinda heard of library cats. Ask the average person and they might be like, “oh, library cats? As in, cats? In libraries? Yeah, I sorta knew that was a thing”. But what some may not know is that library cats are like, an actual “thing”, historically speaking.

Much more than just cool library-dwelling buddies, library cats date back to the Middle Ages. You see, for the most part, cats were often welcomed and cared for in scholarly places such as monasteries, where one’s religious practices went hand-in-hand with accumulating, translating, and transcribing all sorts of texts and scriptures. Cats were kept around to keep rodent infestations under control, and in a time where modern medicine was not yet available, that was crucial.

Since then, the arrangement just sort of stuck. As scholarly resources grew and evolved, the need for a cat in the building stayed the same. And honestly, why not? What better mascot for a library than a creature who quietly lounges in the sun all day, contemplating the mysteries of the universe?

Dewey Readmore Books

Even if you may not have known the history of library cats, you may have still heard a few stories hither and thither about a few famous ones. The first story I ever heard about a library cat was from the book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World. The book tells the story of a sweet orange tabby who warmed the hearts of all the locals in the small town of Spencer, Iowa. Did I, a grown woman, shed a tear at the end? Yes. Get the tissues out, it’s a doozy (in a good way).

When Library Cats Get Political

All library cats serve a purpose. Being a library cat is hard work, but our valiant public servants are out there everyday, keeping libraries safe from vermin. But not all vermin are the small rodent kind who chew through books and leave droppings everywhere. Some are the kind who try to take jobs away from good, honest, hard working cats!

Allow me to weave for you now the tale of Browser, the #unbothered library cat who outlasted the councilman who wanted him gone. What an icon. What an absolute legend.

When our boy Browser’s position at White Settlement Public Library was threatened by one of the city’s councilmen, the backlash hit so hard that the “cat fight” cost the councilman his job instead. If that isn’t poetic justice, then I don’t know what is. Beautiful.

Library Cats Across the Globe

The adoration for library cats doesn’t simply end there, though. From that small town in Iowa all the way to the University of Edinburgh, which has a book about their famous library cat as well, these feline bibliophiles are as beloved as they are necessary. From Dewey, to Browser, to Elsie, the star of St. Helena, and Nyx, the eyeless library cat, also known as “goddess of the night”, library cats are a cornerstone of academia, and without them, who knows where we’d be? As an Irish scholar wrote of his cat, Pangur;

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.