‘The True Tails of Baker and Taylor: The Library Cats Who Left Their Pawprints on a Small Town . . . and the World’ was just published by St. Martins Press/Thomas Dunne Books.
Baker and Taylor lived in a small library in a tiny Nevada town in the 1980s and 1990s. They served as mascots of the Baker & Taylor book distribution company and appeared on millions of shopping bags, ads, and posters. They became famous around the world without a single tweet or Facebook like.
The cats changed everything: Staff loved coming to work, patrons checked out more books, and cat tourists flocked to the library to meet the cats, while 2000 miles away, a second-grade class fan club wrote letters and sent drawings to the cats.
Best of all, the cats helped Jan recover from a devastating divorce.
It all started with mice in the library. Assistant librarian Jan Louch and a coworker decided that what the library needed was a cat. Or, even better, two cats. Soon, they found a pair of Scottish Folds who were perfect for the job. Jan named them Baker and Taylor, and they took up residence in the library.
But these cats were much more than mousers. Visitors to the library fell in love with Baker and Taylor and their antics just as Jan had. And then, after Jan let the cats be photographed for a poster, they became feline celebrities. Children from across the country wrote them letters, fans traveled from far and wide to meet them, and they became the most famous library cats in the world.
In ‘The True Tails of Baker and Taylor‘, Jan Louch looks back and tells the remarkable story of these two marvelous cats and the people―readers, librarians, and cat lovers of all ages―who came together around them.
Baker and Taylor have a Fan Club and they are singing about them: