The author of the "Cat Who..." series of detective stories about a journalist named Qwilleran who solves mysteries with the help of his two pampered and highly intelligent Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Lilian Jackson Braun began writing detective stories about cats to work through her grief after her own Siamese cat Koko was pushed out of a high window and killed. She was born in 1916, and she lives in North Carolina with her husband Earl and two cats.