Walter the Library Cat Has His Own System

Walter is a large grey cat with one slightly bent ear and an air of unmistakable authority. He arrived at the Hartwell Memorial Library nine winters ago through a propped-open back door, ate three biscuits intended for a different cat, and declined to leave.

His system, as best the librarians can tell, works like this. Books returned in good condition are sniffed, briefly, and ignored. Books returned with bent corners or stains are sniffed, glared at, and then dragged with great ceremony onto the floor. Books a week or more overdue receive what staff have come to call The Treatment, which involves Walter sitting directly on top of them for the rest of the afternoon.

Nobody has trained him. Nobody can stop him. A graduate student tried, once, to study his methodology and came back two weeks later in a strange state of calm, saying only that Walter had "a point."

The library's overdue rate has, since Walter arrived, dropped by thirty-one percent. Walter receives, in exchange for his services, two biscuits a day and an unspoken understanding that he runs things now.