Cats are well represented in the cozy mystery genera. Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who mysteries absolutely require KoKo and Yum-Yum. They’re main characters, helping solve mysteries.

Webster is the long-haired black cat with ample white markings who comes with the house at 190. She started out as an appointment, but refused to be marginalized. She began inserting herself into the story in chapter one when she looked out from under the oak sideboard in the dining room “with the reproachful gaze of a highly offended cat.” Webster’s more devoted to the house than anyone in particular, with the exception of Elizabeth. Sarah Lea, a neighbor, tells Carrie, “Webster would be welcome at my house. I’ve known her since she was a kitten, but she’s only good for short visits. She is attached to the house. Cats are often like that, you know. They become attached to a place.”

Carrie appreciates Webster. She’s “good company and a dependable alarm clock.”Carrie, who was never much of a late sleeper anyway, came to expect Webster’s nose in her face about 5:30 AM every morning, followed by kneading paws and a loud, rumbling purr.

Like most cats, Webster knows a great deal more than her people can appreciate. “Poor Webster, what would you tell us if you could just talk?” Carrie asks.

Webster is a good judge of character, too. “Webster jumped down from Elizabeth’s shoulder. Giving the two men a malevolent look, she walked directly back to the bed of impatiens and submerged herself, her ears sticking out above the blossoms like twin periscopes on a submarine.” When Carrie’s friend Katty McCleary comes for the weekend, she exclaims,“This cat must know everybody in Ocean Grove.”    

“But she doesn’t like everybody in Ocean Grove!” Carrie tells her.

Later on in the book, Carrie and Elizabeth meet someone on the beach. They realize they’ve told him just about everything about themselves and found out next to nothing about him, Carrie wonders if they’ve been imprudent. Elizabeth points out, “But Webster trusted him. I’d put money on that.”

Early in their relationship, Carrie learns that Webster considers herself to be a collaborator. She needs to be taken seriously.  Carrie always left a pile of papers on the floor next to her chair so Webster could curl up on them. Otherwise there was a battle over whether or not Webster was to be permitted to sit on her work in progress. They had long-since arrived at a tacit agreement. Carrie let papers fall to the floor as if by accident. Webster discovered and claimed them.

By chapter 4, she’s inched her way firmly into the book. Once in she’d worked her way in, Webster became an important part of the book, a character in her own right. While she doesn’t work out the puzzles in the story, she aids and abets those who do.