The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (Cat Who..., #1)

by Lilian Jackson Braun

“That’s Butchy Bolton,” said Sandy. “She teaches sculpture at the art school—welded metal and all that sort of thing. She and her roommate came as Antony and Cleopatra. Isn’t that a scream? Butchy welded her own armor. It looks like a couple of truck fenders.”

“I have an alternate theory, if you don’t buy my first one.” “What’s that?” “It’s a phenomenon of the electronics age. The art column is turned out by a battery of computers in Rochester, N.Y.”

The man at the top of the stairs was excessively tall and elegantly slender. Mountclemens wore a dark red velvet jacket, and his face impressed the newsman as poetic; perhaps it was the way the thin hair was combed down on the high forehead. A fragrance of lime peel surrounded him.

Character description

Dubiously Qwilleran inspected their packaged cookies, but the ingredients listed in small type (artificial flavoring, emulsifier, glycerine, lecithin and invert syrup) dampened his interest.

Even in the 1960s they were already adding this junk to our food.

Qwilleran opened the door, and the cat—after his usual reconnaissance—walked in, his tail moving from side to side in graceful arabesques. He had been sleeping and had not yet limbered his muscles. Now he arched his back in a taut curve, after which he extended two forward legs in a luxurious stretch. He concluded by making a long leg to the rear.

“As a detective, Jim, you’re a great art writer.