
Feline festivities celebrating the Holt Bookshop's cat
By The Holt Bookshop

A collection of feline books in honour of The Holt Bookshop's cat Mr Hi-Ho, who has just celebrated his 18th birthday. “Time spent with cats is never wasted.” – Sigmund Freud

What Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your Cat
Yuki Hattori
£12.99 £12.34Dr. Yuki Hattori is Japan's leading cat doctor, and to him cats are the most beautiful animals in the world. His advice comes with little illustrations showing exactly what to look for as a cat owner - including charts showing how to interpret their different meows, the direction of their whiskers and the way their tail is pointing! Cats may seem low-maintenance but thoughtfulness about where you put their water, how warm or cool they like to be, what name to choose and how to groom them properly will make a life-changing difference. With understanding, affection and respect, your cat will be more healthy and contented.

Nala's World: One man, his rescue cat and a bike ride around the globe
Dean Nicholson
£18.98Dean Nicholson reveals the full story of his life-changing friendship with rescue cat Nala and their inspiring adventures together on a bike journey around the world. When 30-year-old Dean Nicholson set off from Scotland to cycle around the world, his aim was to learn as much as he could about our troubled planet. But he hadn't bargained on the lessons he'd learn from his unlikely companion. Three months after leaving home, on a remote road in the mountains between Montenegro and Bosnia, he came across an abandoned kitten. Something about the piercing eyes and plaintive meowing of the bedraggled little cat proved irresistible. He couldn't leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health. Soon on his travels with the cat he named Nala, they forged an unbreakable bond - both curious, independent, resilient and adventurous.

Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
John Gray
£20.00'When I play with my cat, how do I know she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?' MontaigneThere is no real evidence that humans ever 'domesticated' cats. Rather, it seems that at some point cats saw the potential value to themselves of humans. John Gray's wonderful new book is an attempt to get to grips with the philosophical and moral issues around the uniquely strange relationship between ourselves and these remarkable animals. Feline Philosophy draws on centuries of philosophy, from Montaigne to Schopenhauer, to explore the complex and intimate links that have defined how we react to and behave with this most unlikely 'pet'. At the heart of the book is a sense of gratitude towards cats as perhaps the species that more than any other - in the essential loneliness of our position in the world - gives us a sense of our own animal nature.

How to Live Like Your Cat
Stephane Garnier
£7.99 £7.59Cats are free. They are calm, observant, wise, elegant, charismatic and proud. In fact, cats have found nothing less than the secret of how we should all live, whatever species we are! And in this book, Stephane Garnier will show you what he's learned over fifteen years of closely observing his cat, and teach you all the ways in which you too can apply the secrets of cats to your own life - at work, at home and with your friends.

Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat
Oliver Soden
£16.99 £16.14Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written. Prize-winning biographer Oliver Soden combines meticulous research with passages of dazzling invention to recount the life of the cat praised as 'a mixture of gravity and waggery'. The narrative roams from the theatres and bordellos of Covent Garden to the cell where Smart was imprisoned for mania. At once whimsical and profound, witty and deeply moving, Soden's biography plays with the genre like a cat with a toy. It tells the story of a poet and a poem, while setting Jeoffry's life and adventures against the roaring backdrop of eighteenth-century London.

The Secret Language Of Cats: How to Understand Your Cat for a Better, Happier Relationship
Susanne Schoetz and Peter Kuras
£9.99 £9.49Do you speak to your cat? Do you feel your cat understands you and vice versa? Cat lovers across the globe know cats can speak. In this compelling new book, Susanne Schotz - a professor at Sweden's Lund University - shares insights into her long-standing cat communication research. Proving that cats not only speak to one another, but also to their human caretakers.

Felix the Railway Cat
Kate Moore
£9.99 £9.49When Felix arrived at Yorkshire's Huddersfield Train Station as an eight-week-old kitten, no one knew just how important this little ball of fluff would become. Although she has a vital job to do as 'Senior Pest Controller', Felix is much more than just an employee of TransPennine Express. Felix changes lives in surprising ways. She is always ready to leap into action and save the day: from bringing a boy with autism out of his shell to providing comfort to a runaway child shivering on the platform one night. So when tragedy hits the team at Huddersfield, it is only Felix who can pull them back together.

Cat Yoga: Purrfect Poses for Flexible Felines
Sam Hart and Danny Cameron
£7.99 £7.59You may think your cat is just a naturally bendy weirdo, but the truth is, they're probably one of the growing number of Zen Yogi Cats - and this book is here to expose what happens when yoga and cats collide.

Jane Bown: Cats
Jane Bown
£14.99 £14.24Jane Bown is a legendary Observer photographer best-known for her portraits of icons from Beckett to Bjoerk. This is a charming collection of 100 black and white pictures of felines which reveals the same sympathetic eye and wit as her portraits. She captures the cats sprawling, prowling, lolling, playing, feeding and lounging.

On Cats
Doris Lessing
£8.99 £8.54A collection of charming and celebrated writings about cats, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Doris Lessing's love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semi-feral creatures on the African farm where she grew up. Her fascination remained undiminished by the handsome domesticated creatures who shared her flats and her life in London and grew into real love with El Magnifico, the awkwardly lovable cat who in his later years suffered the great indignity of becoming a three-legged beast.

A Street Cat Named Bob: How one man and his cat found hope on the streets
James Bowen
£10.99 £10.44From the author of A Christmas Gift from Bob, the original bestseller and heartwarming story of the life-saving friendship between a man and his streetwise cat, Bob. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn't resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable and their diverse, comic and occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other's troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving and uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it.