The cats have all retired and have gone to live in Venice.
Ciao e miaow.
I was in a used bookstore earlier this year that had a cat. It was quite adorable. All sales that day were going to pay for vet bills, but it wasn’t for this cat, it was for the owner’s daughter’s bookstore cat at another location.
It’s been thirty years, but I remember a bookstore in Chicago that had a gray Persian cat named Lady Jane.
A lot of vets have office cats. They live the life of Riley, but they are sometimes used as blood donors.
bookstores that don’t have cats are a mess, they are uncategorized.
I see the word “cat.” 
To be fair to non-cat lovers: An establishment with a resident cat should properly put up a sign: “CAT ON DUTY.” 
I’ve never actually seen a bookstore with a cat. I thought it was one of those things that only appeared in novels.
We once stopped by a pharmacy that had a talking parrot though.
A nursery across the street from us has a cat; they also have a dog, who I assume is on guard duty during off-hours.
A U-Haul place on Artesia Boulevard, around the corner from us, has cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, etc., in the yard. There may be a horse as well, but I’ve never seen one; there’s a horse ranch around the corner on Normandie Avenue.
Some people are very sensitive to allergies. I have a cat and when I have a certain friend over I spend two days washing/scouring/vacuuming, lock the cat in an upstairs bedroom and said friend is still only marginally okay after taking medication. It’s a real problem for some people.
My hair stylist used to have her dog in the salon. A visit from the health department put that to an end. They would shut her down if the dog was ever found there again.
The Wild Birds Center store in Louisville, Kentucky, has a cat that I usually pet every time I stop in for birdseed. I’ve always thought it a little odd that a store dedicated to the support of wild birds would own one of the greatest predators of wild birds. However, they never let it out; it’s there mainly to control the mice that otherwise would break into the seed bags and eat the merchandise.
Cats are allergenic and, I have to say it, they smell. They’re dirty animals; their reputation for cleanliness isn’t deserved. Cat owners don’t realize how much cats smell, but they do (the litterbox smell is very pungent, even if frequently cleaned.) And I’ve owned cats and love them and will again once I get out of this condo; I’m just being honest.
We live in a much cleaner, more hygiene-obsessed society than we did even 20-30 years ago. In 1983 you didn’t see hand sanitizer everywhere and nobody gave a shit about allergies. What would have been considered No Big Deal back then is now a Very Big Deal to some people.
Cats are also capable of being very cranky. A cat with a vendetta can ruin a bookstores inventory fairly quickly by deciding that the books make a nice litterbox.
(When my cat is mad at me, she pees on the dog bed - she’s a good cat, it only happens if I ignore the litterbox for too long or she gets a bladder infection. I have a friend who has a cat that when the cat gets mad, she waits until they are sleeping, then pees on the husband).
A friend of mine from college has a used book store, and you can bet it has cats. I can see why this trend has abated, though. As the OP pointed out, there are fewer and fewer of these types of stores around. In a similar vein, those that are still around have probably deviated from the mom-and-pop/retired antiquarian/dirty hippie model to more business-oriented models that are less likely to go for homey-yet-slightly-disgusting touches like worn out furniture and cats running around. To survive in today’s dire book market, a store has to be leaner and meaner, and the cats may be casualties of that mentality.
As **Zago **makes clear above, our increasing cultural awareness of allergies probably figures into this, too. Back in the day, if cats eliminated 2% of your base due to allergies, you lived with it, figuring the cats made up for the difference, and culturally the onus was more on the allergic people anyway. Nowadays, not only do you need that 2% (which is probably larger now with more people being diagnosed with allergies), but the onus is much more on the retailer to keep an allergy-neutral environment.
My two favourite used bookstores in King St, Newtown, Sydney have cats. I love them and visiting the cats is as much fun as browsing the books. At least one bookstore has been there for 30 years or more.
Best part of going, long live the bookstore cats. Good to not have the whole world sanitised for my safety.
On vacation recently I visited a bookstore that had 3 Shih Tzus.
I know of a hardware/sporting goods store that has a couple of free roaming cats climbing the counters. For some reason, this time of year they really like to hang around the field dressing station. Cats, go figure.
I go to one bookstore that has a large friendly cat that loves to sun itself in the window. Another had an 80 year old parrot named Dopey (it passed away). I think stores with pets are friendlier somehow.
I’m fairly familiar with most of the used bookstores on the north side of Chicago, and I can’t think of *any *of them that have a cat.
My favorite bookstore cats are the ones at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.
They have solved the allergen problem* by having Sphynxes, which are the most amazing creatures:
Photo - Sphynx at Borderlands Books, San Francisco
Alas, Ripley, the cat pictured, has since passed on, but they have other sphynxes in residence these days. My experiences with their sphynxes has been that they are very sweet and loving animals, and quite nice to cuddle.
*(the bookstore owners acknowledge that sphynxes are not truly hypoallergenic, but they believe the lack of hair has reduced the allergic reactions suffered by their patrons, and they claim that no bookstore patron has complained of allergic reactions.)