A kitten named Spike was lost and ended up on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. One day, he wandered by an independent bookstore, Left Bank Books, and when employees saw the cute black kitten, they took and adopted him as their store cat. Almost 11 years after, he’s still there and loving every second of his job as a bookstore cat.
Left Bank Books has previously adopted two other cats before Spike, but now he is the reigning boss. He lives at the store 24/7 and loves to greet customers while the bookstore is open and he makes sure everything is in order all night long.
“He has everything he needs: food, water, endless new books to sleep under,” Left Bank Books’ marketing and publicity manager Lauren Wiser told The Dodo. “We say he’s our night manager. He keeps an eye on all the books until the shop opens in the morning.”
“Spike loves working at the bookstore,” Wiser shared. “He even has his own Staff Pick page on the website. His favorite things to do are sleep in the display window so people outside can adore him, sleep under a bright light where it’s warm, sleep in a director’s chair downstairs in the used books, sleep on top of new displays (to make sure people notice them, of course) and interrupt staff meetings.”
Spike has become a local celebrity and even has his own Instagram account. There are people who come into the bookstore just to see Spike and he’s happy to greet his fans.
“People love to see Spike wandering the shelves,” Wiser explained. “I think one of the questions we get asked most, besides questions about certain books, is, ‘Where’s Spike?’ Sometimes we can guess where he is, and sometimes he hides from all of us! It’s really Spike’s choice whether he wants to come out and greet his adoring fans. Some of our customers even bring in treats for him. Spike gets Christmas presents every year!”
“When he’s feeling frisky, he’ll jump on top of shelves and make everyone nervous,” Wiser added. “Sometimes we’re not even sure how he climbs up to certain places! He also tries to ‘inspect’ the bagels at our staff meetings. Once he flung about 100 shopping bags all around the floor under the front desk. We didn’t even get mad at him, we just caught it on video because it was so funny.”
