Quick reread. I vaguely remembered this opening book of Lilian Jackson Braun. There is a break in this series. The first three were written in the mid 1960's, Braun stopped and twenty years after publishing The Cat Who Could Read Backwards she wrote The Cat Who Saw Red and it relaunched the series.

This is KoKo's bow, where Siamese Cat and newspaper reporter Jim Qwilleran meet. Qwilleran returns to journalism after years battling drinking abuse. The Art beat is strange but Qwilleran soon finds himself in the middle of a trio of murders where KoKo seems to know all about.

Short and so much better than maybe the last 10 titles published in the series.