How much of that is true? Not the part about the fans accepting any old "boilerplate" - the part about the importance of..."kitty porn" in the books.
Obviously, the cats are a big drawing point - the kittycat antics are meant to endear the books to cat lovers through having them identify with the feline behavior portrayed. And yet (though I am a cat lover) the cats're really hardly ever foremost on my mind, personally; it's the human cast members - sensible yet personable Qwilleran, sympathetic listener and stubborn investigator, and supporting players like Nick, Arch, Odd, Edd, and Iris - who stick more in my mind and heart. (And I know I'm not alone - I've received a number of e-mails over the months from fans who do not take to cats and yet have found themselves won over by the convention human characters or other story elements.) The feline moments I find memorable are the ones which treat the cats as equal characters to the bipeds - Koko's proper yet casual little visit to Qwilleran's apartment in Mountclemens' brownstone that sets the respectful tone for their friendship in Could Read Backwards, or the cat's neurotic bouts with loneliness in Danish Modern. Of course, one can't help but take to the great kittycat-antic scenes, especially when played for laughs (the real kitty porn in the books - the cats suddenly striking obscene poses whenever Bushy Bushland tries to take a glamour photo of them - perhaps comes to mind here), even though they're not as...defining to me.
The problem, though, is when such escapades are invoked so frequently that they become cliché. Later going-through-the-motions episodes of the Siamese displaying vague catly contempt for humans - refusing to come when called or behave for company, being fickle when it comes to favorite food or toys, etc. - usually ending with Qwilleran huffing into his moustache and shouting "Cats!" or some similar exclamation, tacked-on and existing in a storyline-relevance vacuum, are lifeless and dreary. The (uncoincidentally weaker) most recent books' reliance upon them is contemptible, since, as the Times reviewer stated more sweepingly and bluntly, it's substituting audience-pandering for solid writing and characterization (and, as also per the Times review, it alienates the aforementioned readers who don't care for fawning over kitties). When Koko and Yum Yum's behavior (or, really, that of any feline in any work where they're taken as full-fledged characters in the proceedings) reverts to predictable patterns of "typical cat" behavior, supposedly funny only because it proves reliably vexing to the humans in the story, it just makes them seem very, very ordinary and undermines them as individuals. (It also serves to frame their clue-dispensing activities as heavy-handed and obvious, not to mention obligatory.)
This is the primary reason why I've honestly never been a big Yum Yum fan - to me, she's nearly all cutesy kittycat. The only moment I've really gotten the warm, fuzzy feeling I'm supposed to feel toward the character is during the hummingbird incident in, of all books, Saw Stars, where she releases the trapped bird by pressing on the screen in which it has its beak caught; it communicates a basic sweetness in her character and belies a charming, naive curiosity about her world. (It also can be viewed as a flash of brilliant cleverness melded with innocent playfulness, as Yum Yum batting a ball of yarn around Qwilleran's apartment to spin a beautiful web which also foils an attempt on Qwilleran's life during the night.) And, because of this - most importantly - it feels genuine.
And it's here where I feel that cuddly kitties and good characterization do not have to be mutually exclusive. Braun can be exceptionally perceptive when it comes to the feline mind, exemplified by her short story "Phut Phat Concentrates", which paints a portrait of a calmly assured feline, secure master of his ordered world, scoffing at the ridiculous false notions of control that scatterbrained humans entertain - and yet, for all his piercing knowledge and lofty worldview, still shown in the end as an animal subject to base instinct and primal fears - a creature of remarkable sagacity, but a creature nonetheless. A shining example of this dualism in the Cat Who... series proper is Koko's clue-dropping in Could Read Backwards - bringing Qwilleran to happen upon a vital clue stuck in a closet while hunting for the beloved catnip toy the cat implores him to find, urging the man with plaintive cries and pleading, demanding body language to a horrible yet vital discovery to bring help to his fallen master, or effortlessly leading Qwilleran's thought process along to the conclusion that was just barely eluding the newsman before through casually sniffing along a certain tiny section of a painting, in the style - with which, yes, any cat owner will be familiar - of a simply curious feline inspecting the surface of a nearby object that for some unknown reason has caught his olfactories' attention. His demeanor during these incidents carries an intelligence that indicates a certain self-awareness, and yet it is entirely plausible that his actions arose out of simple catly needs and wants (it's undeniable that they at least partially did), communicated in a manner essentially feline.
The cats don't have to be vapid to be endearing or give up their essential natures to perform their function in the plot and mystery when Braun draws upon her reserve of insight into the species - the series draws so many ailurophiles that its overall effectiveness is unquestionable, and yet its widespread popular success denotes that it can entertain a crossover audience as well.
Addendum: Alert reader Eileen Carlan makes an excellent point which I completely overlooked: "'Kitty Porn'?!?!...I get the New York Times' writer's pun, a play on the term used for publication of the sexual abuse of children. Frankly, that's a topic that I don't think should be the basis of a joke. I think whoever wrote that review used extremely bad taste, not only a lack of understanding of cat behavior. He/she should attend to his/her own writing before critiquing Braun's."
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