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GREENSBORO — A bookstore just isn’t a bookstore without a cat.

Or quirky customers.

Or the smell of old books with stained and weathered pages.

That smell — a combination of dust and slightly damp air — is as heavenly to book lovers as a whiff of nicotine to a smoker.

Pages Past has all of this.

It’s a true bookstore for true book lovers. The books are somewhat organized into typical categories: psychology, poetry, religion and the like. But there are also stacks of books against the shelves. And books still housed in liquor boxes. And books on the checkout shelf near the door.

Owner Roger March will likely be sitting at his desk near the front window, researching his latest batch of newly acquired books on the Internet. Sometimes, his tortoise shell cat, Maxime — Hebrew for beautiful — perches on his shoulder, digging tiny punctures into his shirt. Soft strains of Israeli classical music come from his computer.

He has run this small bookshop on Spring Garden Street for 14 years now.

But this isn’t a place that stocks contemporary novels. March specializes in old and rare books. He often attracts collectors looking for tomes that are unusual or out of print.

Take this recent sale: a first edition of “The Negro in Business,” by Booker T. Washington.

Buyers for this kind of book will likely be the scholarly, librarian type. Bespectacled and blazered (with elbow patches, of course).

Sure, he gets the occasional bohemian high-schooler looking for a weathered volume of Poe stories or Byron poems. And every now and then, a stylish interior designer comes looking for old books to stand alongside chic knickknacks in a client’s library or living room.

The owners of these books probably won’t open the covers and marvel at their condition. They won’t likely take

the time to read the faded inscriptions and wonder who the previous owners may have been. And they may never raise these books to their noses to inhale the fragrantly stale pages.

That’s because reading an old book with its pages barely clinging to disintegrated seams is as romantic a notion as writing a love letter with a quill pen.

It’s the age of Kindle and iPad. Books today are quickly read — or listened to — while on planes or long layovers.

Or in doctor’s offices or the carpool line at school. Not savored page by page while lounging in your most comfortable chair at home in a completely silent room, with a cat curled up at your feet.

March suspects it might even be more financially lucrative to close his shop.

So why keep it open?

March says it’s still around for those rare few like him.

“I like folks who read,” he says. “Folks who read usually have active minds, which makes for lively

conversations.”

Contact Tina Firesheets at 373-3498 or tina.firesheets@news-record.com