Plagg

Introduction to the series

Yum Yum first appears in The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, the second Lilian Jackson Braun novel, published by E.P. Dutton in New York in 1968 with a first-printing dust jacket by illustrator Robert Burger. In that book journalist Jim Qwilleran is sent to write a magazine feature on the late interior designer Mountclemens, whose seal-point Siamese Freya is left without a home after a murder. Qwilleran adopts her, renames her Yum Yum after the heroine of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and takes her to live with the existing male Siamese Koko at his Junktown brownstone apartment.

Character traits across 29 novels

Yum Yum is consistently described as smaller and lighter than Koko, with a higher-pitched voice and a habit of stealing small metal objects — rubber bands, paper clips, the diamond ring of Polly Duncan in The Cat Who Lived High, and on one occasion a wedding ring in The Cat Who Wasn't There. Her kleptomania supplies recurring plot business across the series' 29-volume span, finishing with The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers from Putnam's in January 2007. Braun routinely paired Yum Yum's instinctive object-collection with Koko's book-pulling to provide complementary clue patterns.

Author's real cats and dedications

Braun acquired her own real-life female Siamese named Yum Yum in 1967, a kitten given to her by her second husband Earl Bettinger as a wedding present after their April marriage. The dedication page of The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern reads "To my husband Earl, and our cats Koko and Yum Yum." Braun maintained the dedication structure across the series, sometimes adding the names of subsequent rescue cats from the Tryon, North Carolina shelter where she volunteered.

Publishing trajectory and audience

The series moved from Dutton to Berkley Putnam in 1986 after an eighteen-year publishing pause and continued at Penguin Group US imprints through 2007. By Braun's death in June 2011, Yum Yum and Koko were among the best-known cat detectives in the cosy-mystery subgenre alongside Rita Mae Brown's Mrs. Murphy. Putnam reported series lifetime sales exceeding eight million copies in 2002, with active backlist royalties continuing posthumously to Braun's estate, managed by her cousin and literary executor Shirley Bradley.