wwnorton:

In 1968, Patricia Highsmith (pictured) gave her beloved cat Spider to fellow writer Muriel Spark. Of the cat, Spark is quoted in The Talented Miss Highsmith as saying: 

“He was the most wonderful cat: black—perhaps partly Siamese—with enormous green eyes. And very intelligent. You could tell he had been a writer’s cat. He would sit by me, seriously, as I wrote, while all my other cats filtered away.”

I imagine the same could be said of Emma Straub’s cats.