Poet now "Puss in Books?"

From the BBC: Literary cat makes library visits

photo caption: Fidel the cat spends his days at Deal library while his owners are at work

A Kent library has been visited almost every day for two years by its own "puss in books", the council has said. Fidel, an eight-year-old black cat, turns up at Deal library almost every day while his owners are at work.

He spends the day on his favourite blue chair, only leaving the building when he sees his owners arriving home.

Staff say they have never tried to encourage Fidel with food and even used to put him outside when he first began to visit them, but he always came back.

'Art critic'

Heather Hilton, district manager for Deal Library, said: "Fidel certainly seems to like coming here and he's very popular with our customers.

"I think he's a bit of an art critic too because we sometimes see him examining the pictures on the gallery wall," she added.

A spokeswoman for Kent County Council which runs the library said Fidel was such a "dedicated customer" that he sometimes arrived before staff and could be found waiting at the front door.

Fidel is a rescue cat, whose owners chose him from a local sanctuary after he was found abandoned in a flat in Deal.


Personally, I think that this is the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe ironically reincarnated into another "Black Cat." Who say that there isn't a spirit of perverseness at work on the higher planes? I mean, look at that cat! Look at Poe ... It's not too fur-fetched.