patron, unable to see the keyboard: you have good eyesight! make sure to keep your eyes
me, wearing relatively heavy prescription glasses:

please tell me theres someone else who is extremely abnormal about denpa men despite having just discovered it

So, library cats.

We all love em, right? Introverts love reading and cats. Cats keep mice away and look adorable doing so. It's a match made in heaven. Everyone loves pictures of kittens curled up in books.

A couple years ago, Browser, a library cat, was evicted. This caused such an international scandal that there was a re-vote and Browser stayed. Good guys win, right? The cat stays, the guy who initiated the vote loses his next election, everyone cheers.

Well...

The thing about libraries is that they are primarily community centers that provide access to information resources (and sometimes just resources, depending). This makes accessibility extremely important. We do not play music, discourage strong odors and noise level below a certain level (higher than it used to be, but still) and generally make sure the library is somewhere you can research, read or just hang out at in peace. That brings us to another key policy: no animals except for service animals! The reasons are typically noise and aggression, but above all, the fact that some people are allergic to animals.

People get REALLY MAD when you tell them their non service animals can't come in the library. People who know how to answer the only questions we can legally ask get even more upset when their obviously untrained dog gets excluded from the library for barking or lunging. The level of entitlement people have towards being able to bring their dogs everywhere with them is immense. But here's the thing: people are allergic to dogs, and you're not owed that space. I've had coworkers allergic to animals. If we had a library cat, the dander would be everywhere, even with maintenance cleaning all the time. They would have no choice but to be either chugging allergy medication or to transfer to another branch - assuming a position was open. So when I think of everyone being upset about Browser being excluded, I can't help but think about the patrons in the community silently relieved they can finally go back to the library, then angry and giving up on the system again when Browser was reinstated.

"But what about Browser?" Good question! Is a library even a safe environment for a cat? Sure, he could probably be a mean mouser, but there are materials in the library that just aren't safe for cats. What if he gets stuck in the bathroom? Are the flowers on display cat safe? What if he gets into the cleaning or maintenance materials in the back? All of these immediately jump to my mind, and depending on the architecture of the library, he may also get stuck somewhere or be knocking over displays left and right, potentially hurting himself. And maybe I'm just a paranoid person, but I would never let the public have open access to my baby. Most people will be nice, yes, but kids tend to grab tails and someone with bad intent...

Ultimately, the story of Browser is a tragedy painted as a feel good story. When the re-vote successfully reinstated Browser, the councilman made a speech in which he apologized to any patron who would now be unable to use library services due to his presence. Reading that line years ago, that is what stuck with me, before I had even entered my field of study. A man apologizing for failing his constituents, because the story had become "this man hates this cat and he's evil", rather than "this man wants people with accessibility needs to be able to use the library".

So, no. I don't think that cats should be in the library - it's for everyone's benefit, including the cats themselves. In light of this, libraries should start employing more catboys, catgirls and general cat therians to make up for the destinct lack of felines. Since they're physically humans they're hypoallergenic. That was the whole point of this post. Thanks for reading!