The Cat Who books features newspaper journalist Jim Qwilleran and his two Siamese cats, Koko (short for Kao K'o Kung) and Yum Yum, first in an unnamed midwestern American city and then in the fictitious small town of Pickax located in Moose County "400 miles north of everywhere".
Although never explicitly located in the books, the towns, counties, and lifestyles portrayed in the series are generally accepted to be modeled after Bad Axe, Michigan, where Braun resided with her husband until the mid-1980s.
Like many writers of her generation, Braun was an admitted technophobe; she wrote all of her books in long hand and then typed them herself.
Many of her books have been published as audiobooks narrated by George Guidall, Mason Adams, Christopher Ragland and Theodore Bikel.
Finally she lived in Tryon, North Carolina, with her second husband of 32 years, Earl Bettinger, and their two cats.