AN INTOXICATING FELINE TRIO; MARTINI, GIN, AND SHERRY
This article first appeared on March 25, 2003, at the Cats in Literature, History, and Art topic: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/cats... I am reprinting it here for your convenience, rather than just posting a link to the article. It is a wonderful read and suggests some great books that are especially interesting to me since I love both books and cats!
This topic is available for adoption if you would like to continue Joyce's great work. Email me at gitaylor@suite101.com for more details.
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Long before feline detectives Midnight Louie (created by Carole Nelson Douglas), Sneaky Pie Brown (created by Rita Mae Brown), and Koko and Yum Yum (created by Lilian Jackson Braun), three enchanting cats entered the world of mystery fiction. Their creators, Frances and Richard Lockridge, introduced them in the Mr. and Mrs. North series of novels. Pete, a black and white tomcat, was the first cat in the first of the series, Murder Out of Turn, in 1940. Toughie, a part-Siamese, and Ruffy, a small gray and white cat were introduced in Death Takes a Bow in 1943.
By 1946, Toughie and Ruffy had disappeared. Martini, a Siamese, who would become the matriarch of the cat clan, first appeared in Murder Within Murder. Pam North found herself captivated by Martini, who would forever be the cat of her life. Later, Martini's two daughters, Gin and Sherry, became part of the North feline menage.
Jerry North, for those of you who may not know, was a publisher of a small press in New York City, where he and his wife, Pam, lived. Somehow or other, Pam always found herself involved in trying to solve strange mysteries. Jerry, as a long-suffering and devoted husband, followed wherever Pam's offbeat reasoning took her. The tales are filled with cocktails (mostly martinis) and Pam's unerring penchant for singeing her hair with cigarettes. And the cats, of course. They will forever be identified with their Greenwich Village apartment at 95 Greenwich Place, their rural retreat in upstate New York, the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library, the Florida Keys, and other locations where murdered corpses turn up, it would seem, just for Pam, in her "screwy" way, to find the murderer.
The cats never solved a mystery, but they were always there, in all twenty-six books, over a period of twenty-three years. Though not detectives, their presence shows the devotion and love the Lockridges had for cats of all kinds. One of their characters, Dorian Weigand, the wife of Pam and Jerry's friend and police detective, Lieutenant William (Bill) Weigand, was always described in feline terms.
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