If I may suggest as well, doing this using sprintf is not ideal. Using placeholders is always a better idea:

my $sql = q{
 
    SELECT
        `Cats`.`Name`,
        `Address`.`Address`,
        `Address`.`City`,
        `Contact`.`Phone`,
        `Keys`.`Keywords`
    FROM
    (
    `Cats`
        LEFT JOIN
            `Address`
                USING (`Name`)
        LEFT JOIN
             `Contact`      
                USING (`Name`) 
        LEFT JOIN
             `Keys`      
                USING (`Name`)         
    )
    WHERE
        `Keys`.`Keywords` LIKE ? 
    ORDER BY
        `Cats`.`Name` asc LIMIT ?,?
};

# get the statement handle, assuming a valid DBI object in $dbh
my $sth = $dbh->prepare( $sql );
$sth->execute( '%'.$search.'%', $start - 1, $per_page + 1 );
[download]

You also had the "order by" clause stating name. I would have thought that'd be an error since you're not specifying the table in a join. I've changed it to `Cats`.`Name`.

update: I'm an idiot. Fixed execute syntax.

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