Coming soon! Cat Café, a new Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery by Mollie Hunt 

A body is discovered on the floor of the cat café, and all the black cats are missing! 

The 5^th Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery finds sixty-something cat shelter volunteer Lynley Cannon confronted by the murders of some very senior citizens, including Bea Landrew, the elderly owner of the Blue Cat café, a schoolmate and friend of her mom Carol. Could Carol could be next on this deviant killer’s list?

Cat Café has lots of twists and turns before the killer is finally revealed. The story also highlights many exciting subjects along the way. They all fit somewhere— can you guess where?

A cat circus? But cats don’t do tricks…

Oh, yes they do! Ask anyone who has seen Samantha Martin and her amazing Acro-cats. I got to attend their show when they came to Portland, and even helped with some of the backstage cat handling.  The cats are amazing; Samantha is amazing! I suppose that’s why they are called the amazing Acro-Cats!

What’s even more amazing is that all Samantha’s cats are rescues, and all her training is done through positive reinforcement (kitty treats). If a cat doesn’t feel like doing a trick, so be it. If kitty wants to leave the stage and visit with the audience— it happens! They are, after all, cats, and Samantha expects nothing less from them.

I wanted to reproduce that sense of amazement and wonder in Cat Café, so I introduced the Fantasti-cats, who are loosely based on the Acro-cats feline troupe and their cat lady extraordinaire. It’s the grand opening of the Blue Cat café, and the new owner intends to begin with a bang. Lynley and her shelter friend Frannie look on,  wowed by the performance:

…In honor of the occasion, I’ve arranged for some novel entertainment…”

“You mean that smack-down with the hippie wasn’t the show?” someone called jovially.

His face reddened ever so slightly, but he didn’t miss a beat. “What kind of cat café entertainment would it be without cats?” he cracked, skewering the heckler with a green-eyed stare before returning to his audience. “And cats are what we have for you today. If everyone will move away from the center of the room, we can get ready for our show…” He smiled out toward the rabble rouser. “Our genuine show. May I present to you, Gretchel and her famous Fantasti-cats!”

With an expansive gesture, he welcomed a tall lady wearing a treasure trove of pink circus spangles into the spotlight.

While Gretchel gave a brief history of her act—how she got started; how all her cats were rescues; how she trained them to do the amazing things they did—a crew of costumed helpers quickly exchanged the café cats for her own clowder. A young girl in an angel outfit came and relieved us of Romeo, promising she would return him at the end of the performance.

As they began setting up hoops, ladders, and even a tiny bandstand, the audience murmured in anticipation.

“I’ve heard of the Fantasti-cats before but never seen them perform,” Frannie whispered with a giggle of delight. “This is so exciting.”

* * *

The Fantasti-cats were, well, nothing short of fantastic. As someone who has barely mastered teaching her cats to come when called, I more than respected what Gretchel had done with her clowder. In a tattoo of clicks, a flurry of wands, and a shower of yummy treats, she and her assistants had the cats jumping, climbing, and even walking a high wire. For the finale, four of them played a racket of instruments: a set of drums, a small guitar, a tambourine, and a bell on a stick to which the audience delightfully echoed Gretchel’s cry of More cowbell! As she left the room to a rousing ovation, her cats scampered after like a flock of ducklings behind mom.

—Cat Café, Chapter 16- 17

About the Acro-cats: Rock Cats Rescue, and their human staff, are devoted to promoting the mental and physical health benefits of cat training through the use of clicker training…a positive reinforcement based training method.

 We also encourage and support feline fostering, rescue and adoption as we travel across the country performing our entertaining and educational show, with our own troupe of former orphans, rescues and strays…The Acro Cats!

 The purr-forming purr-sonalities have as much fun as their audience with obvious content with their lime-light status as they demonstrate astounding feats of agility so synonymous with their species. On Samantha’s cue, they perform tricks with various hoops, tumblers, skateboards, hoisting flags, reading signs, even rolling balls over parallel ropes! This amazing spectacle also includes performing mice, rats and even a cat vs chicken bowling show-down!

—The Amazing Acro-cats website

Samantha is currently undergoing treatment and recovery for Cancer. More information about this can be found on her go fund me page. http://www.circuscats.com/

Launch date for Cat Café, the 5^th Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery is October 29^th, National Cat Day. Pre-order your copy now!