‘Mew’ whodunit combines knowledge with fiction

When is a mystery more than a simple mystery? When it’s also an animal book, full of advice and pet-care tips for those of us who love our four-legged friends.

That’s the story behind “Mew is for Murder” by author Clea Simon.

“Mew is for Murder” is more than a “cozy,” as classic whodunits are called, because Simon knows something about cats. Her 2002 nonfiction book “The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats” chronicled the history and mythology that have long linked the feminine and the feline and also recounted stories about cat lovers, feral rescue, shelter programs, and the strange behavior known as animal hoarding.

Simon, who also writes for the Boston Globe and New York Times, put her feline research to good use in her first fictional foray.

“The people who read cat mysteries are first and foremost cat lovers,” Simon says from her Massachusetts home. “I know because I’m one of them!

“But I don’t like cutesy cat books, where the cats don’t act like real felines. I wanted to give readers a book that played up the actual ‘catitude’ of our favorite pets – the real-life traits that make them so adorable – as well as a murder mystery and a little romance.”

The result mixes animal lore in with a killer plot.

As it opens, the heroine, a cat-loving freelance writer named Theda Krakow thinks she’s got a cat hoarder – a “crazy cat lady” – in her neighborhood. But when she sets out to interview the old woman, she finds her dead.

The neighbors are glad that the “cat lady” is gone, and the police are only too willing to believe that the death of a solitary old lady was accidental. Therefore, it falls to Theda to find out who would want an innocent person dead – a mystery she must solve in time to save all the cats and kittens the old lady had been sheltering in her tumbledown house.

To meet both of her goals, Theda must navigate the harsh realities of pet overpopulation and shelter overcrowding. Along the way, she also learns something about herself, particularly when she ends up fostering a black-and-white kitten named Musetta.

On Simon’s Web site, www.CleaSimon.com, you’ll find photos of the real-life Musetta who inspired the book, complete with the off-center white star on her nose. Musetta, said Simon, was also a shelter kitty.

On the site, you’ll also find links to stories on real-life animal hoarders, stories that don’t have quite such happy endings as the one in “Mew is for Murder.” But for Simon, the chance to share such knowledge in a fun and entertaining format outweighed the need to focus on the dark side.

Animal hoarding, as Simon explains, is a strange phenomenon that scientists are only beginning to understand. Although the classic hoarders (and people do hoard other animals, although cats are most common) don’t realize it, they take in too many animals.

They end up not being able to care for the animals (which often become ill or starve) or themselves. But because of their condition, which may be a mental illness related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, the hoarders don’t see how filthy their homes have become or how sick their animals are.

After Theda becomes involved with the old woman’s cats, these fine felines end up in the overcrowded shelter system. In “Mew is for Murder,” a sympathetic vet and friends in the community work hard to place all the animals, but it’s a race against time.

“We all know that we should have our animals spayed or neutered,” Simon said. “But we need to remember why.”

In “Mew is for Murder,” she makes the lessons real with a little mystery and mayhem thrown in.