Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World

Chapter 4

A Day in the Library

Cats are creatures of habit, and it didn’t take long for Dewey to develop a routine. When I arrived at the library every morning, he was waiting for me at the front door. He would take a few bites of his food while I hung up my jacket and bag, and then we would walk the library together, making sure everything was in place and discussing our evenings. Dewey was more a sniffer than a talker, but I didn’t mind. The library, once so cold and dead first thing in the morning, was alive and well.

After our walk, Dewey would visit the staff. If someone was having a bad morning, he’d spend extra time with her. Jean Hollis Clark had recently married and commuted forty-five minutes from Estherville to the library. You’d think that would frazzle her, but Jean was the calmest person you’ve ever met. The only thing that bothered her was the friction between a couple people on staff. She’d still be carrying the tension when she arrived the next morning, and Dewey was always there to comfort her. He had an amazing sense of who needed him, and he was always willing to give his time. But never for too long. At two minutes to nine, Dewey would drop whatever he was doing and race for the front door.

A patron was always waiting outside at nine o’clock when we opened the doors, and she would usually enter with a warm, “Hi, Dewey. How are you this morning?”

Welcome, welcome, I imagined him saying from his post to the left of the door. Why don’t you pet the cat?

No response. The early birds were usually there for a reason, which meant they didn’t have time to stop and chat with a cat.

No petting? Fine. There’s always another person where you came from—wherever that is.

It wouldn’t take long for him to find a lap, and since he’d been up for two hours that usually meant it was time for a quick nap. Dewey was already so comfortable in the library he had no problem falling asleep in public places. He preferred laps, of course, but if they weren’t available he would curl up in a box. The cards for the catalog came in small boxes about the size of a pair of baby shoes. Dewey liked to cram all four feet inside, sit down, and let his sides ooze over the edge. If the box was a little bigger, he buried his head and tail in the bottom. The only thing you could see was a big blob of back fur sticking out of the top. He looked like a muffin. One morning I found Dewey sleeping beside a box full of cards with one paw resting inside. It probably took him hours to reluctantly admit there wasn’t room for anything else.

Soon after, I watched him slowly wind his way into a half-empty tissue box. He put his two front feet through the slit on top, then delicately stepped in with the other two. Slowly he sat down on his hind legs and rolled his back end until it was wedged into the box. Then he started bending his front legs and working the front of his body into the crease. The operation took four or five minutes, but finally there was nothing left but his head sticking out in one direction and his tail sticking out in the other. I watched as he stared half-lidded into the distance, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.

In those days, Iowa provided envelopes with its tax forms, and we always put a box of them out for patrons. Dewey must have spent half his first winter curled up in that box. “I need one envelope,” a patron would say nervously, “but I don’t want to disturb Dewey. What should I do?”

“Don’t worry. He’s asleep.”

“But won’t it wake him up? He’s lying on top of them.”

“Oh, no, Dew’s dead to the world.”

The patron gently rolled Dewey to the side and then, far more carefully than necessary, slid out an envelope. He could have jerked it like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under a dinner setting, it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Cat hair comes with the envelope, no charge.”

Dewey’s other favorite resting spot was the back of the copier. “Don’t worry,” I told the confused patrons, “you can’t disturb him. He sleeps there because it’s warm. The more copies you make, the more heat the machine produces, the happier he’ll be.”

If the patrons weren’t quite sure what to do with Dewey yet, the staff had no such hesitation. One of my first decisions was that no library funds, not one penny, would ever be spent on Dewey’s care. Instead, we kept a Dewey Box in the back room. Everyone on staff tossed in their loose change. Most of us also brought in soda cans from home. Recycling soda cans was all the rage, and one of the clerks, Cynthia Behrends, would take the cans to a drop-off point every week. The whole staff was “feeding the kitty” to feed the kitty.

In return for these small contributions, we’d get endless hours of pleasure. Dewey loved drawers, and he developed a habit of popping out of them when you least expected. If you were shelving books, he’d jump onto the cart and demand a trip around the library. And when Kim Peterson, the library secretary, started typing, you knew a show was about to begin. As soon as I heard those keys, I’d put down my work and wait for the signal.

“Dewey’s after the clacker thingies again!” Kim would call out.

I’d hurry out of my office to find Dewey hunched on the back edge of Kim’s big white typewriter. His head would be jerking from side to side as the disk moved left to right, then back again, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at the clacker thing-ies, which were nothing more than the keys rising up to strike the paper. The whole staff would be there, watching and laughing. Dewey’s antics always drew a crowd.

This was important. Everyone at the library was well-intentioned, but over the years the staff had become splintered and cliquish. Only Doris Armstrong, who was older and possibly wiser than the rest of us, had managed to stay friends with everyone. She had a large desk in the middle of the staff area where she covered each new book with a plastic protective sleeve, and her humor and good cheer held us together. She was also our biggest cat lover, and soon her desk was one of Dewey’s favorite spots. He would sprawl there in the late morning, batting at her big sheets of plastic, the new center of attention and the mutual friend of everyone on staff. Here, finally, was something we could share. Just as important, he was a friend to all our children (or in Doris’s case, grandchildren), too. Nothing concrete happened—no one apologized or discussed their issues, for instance—but once Dewey arrived the tension began to lift. We were laughing; we were happier; Dewey had brought us together.

But no matter how much fun Dewey was having, he never forgot his routine. At exactly ten thirty, he would hop up and head for the staff room. Jean Hollis Clark ate yogurt on her break, and if he hung around long enough she’d let him lick the lid. Jean was quiet and hardworking, but she always found ways to accommodate Dewey. If Dewey wanted downtime, he would lie limply over Jean’s left shoulder—and only her left shoulder, never her right—while she filed papers. After a few months, Dewey wouldn’t let us hold him cradled in our arms anymore (too much like a baby, I suppose) so the whole staff adopted Jean’s over the shoulder technique. We called it the Dewey Carry.

Dewey helped me with downtime, too, which was nice since I had a tendency to work too hard. Many days I’d be hunched over my desk for hours, so intent on budget numbers or progress reports that I wouldn’t even realize Dewey was there until he sprang into my lap.

“How you doing, baby boy?” I’d say with a smile. “So nice to see you.” I’d pet him a few times before turning back to my work. Unsatisfied, he’d climb on my desk and start sniffing. “Oh, you just happened to sit on the paper I’m working on, didn’t you? Purely a coincidence.”

I put him on the floor. He hopped back up. “Not now, Dewey. I’m busy.” I put him back down. He hopped back up. Maybe if I ignored him.

He pushed his head against my pencil. I pushed him aside. Fine, he thought, I’ll knock these pens to the ground. Which he proceeded to do, one pen at a time, watching each one fall. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, Dewey, you win.” I wadded up a piece of paper and threw it to him. He ran after it, sniffed it, then came back. Typical cat. Always one to play, never one to fetch. I walked over, picked up the paper, tossed it a few more times. “What am I going to do with you?”

But it wasn’t all jokes and games. I was the boss, and I had responsibilities—like giving the cat a bath. The first time I bathed Dewey, I was confident things would go well. He loved the bath that first morning, right? This time, Dewey slid into the sink like a block of ice dropped . . . into a vat of acid. He thrashed. He screamed. He put his feet on the edge of the sink and tried to throw his body over the side. I held him down with both arms. Twenty minutes later, I was covered with water. My hair looked like I had stuck my tongue in a light socket. Everybody laughed, including, eventually, me.

The third bath was just as bad. I managed to get Dewey scrubbed, but I didn’t have the patience for toweling and blow-drying. Not this crazy kitten.

“Fine,” I told him. “If you hate it that much, just go.”

Dewey was a vain cat. He would spend an hour washing his face until he got it just right. The funniest part was the way he would ball up his fist, lick it, and shove it into his ears. He would work those ears until they were sparkling white. Now, soaking wet, he looked like a Chihuahua crushed by a wave of toupees. It was pathetic. The staff was laughing and taking pictures, but Dewey looked so genuinely upset that after a few minutes the pictures stopped.

“Have a sense of humor, Dew,” I teased him. “You brought this on yourself.” He curled up behind a shelf of books and didn’t come out for hours. After that, Dewey and I agreed that two baths a year were plenty.

“The bath is nothing,” I told Dewey a few months into his stay at the library, wrapping him up in his green towel. “You’re not going to like this at all.” Dewey never rode in a cage; it was too much like that night in the box. Whenever I took him out of the library, I just wrapped him up in his green towel.

Five minutes later, we arrived at Dr. Esterly’s office at the other end of town. There were several veterinarians in Spencer—after all, we lived in an area prone to breech-birth cows, distressed hogs, and sick farm dogs—but I preferred Dr. Esterly. He was a quiet, self-effacing man with an extremely deliberate way of speaking. His voice was deep and slow like a lazy river. He didn’t rush. He was always tidy. He was a big man but his hands were gentle. He was conscientious and efficient. He knew his job. He loved animals. His authority came from his lack of words, not his use of them.

“Hi, Dewey,” he said, checking him over.

“Do you think this is absolutely necessary, Doctor?”

“Cats need to be neutered.”

I looked down at Dewey’s tiny paws, which had finally healed. There were tuffs of fur sticking out from between his toes. “Do you think he’s part Persian?”

Dr. Esterley looked at Dewey. His regal bearing. The glorious ruff of long orange fur around his neck. He was a lion in alley cat clothing.

“No. He’s just a good-looking alley cat.”

I didn’t believe it for a second.

“Dewey is a product of survival of the fittest,” Dr. Esterly continued. “His ancestors have probably lived in that alley for generations.”

“So he’s one of us.”

Dr. Esterly smiled. “I suppose so.” He picked Dewey up and held him under his arm. Dewey was relaxed and purring. The last thing Dr. Esterly said before they disappeared around the corner was, “Dewey is one fine cat.”

He sure was. And I missed him already.

When I picked Dewey up the next morning, my heart almost broke in two. He had a faraway look in his eyes, and a little shaved belly. I took him in my arms. He pushed his head against my arm and started purring. He was so happy to see his old pal Vicki.

Back at the library, the staff dropped everything. “Poor baby. Poor baby.” I gave him over to their care—he was our mutual friend, after all—and went back to work. One more set of hands and he might be crushed. Besides, the trip to the vet’s office had put me behind, and I had a mountain of work. I needed two of me to do this job right, but the city would never have paid for it, so I was stuck with myself.

But I wasn’t alone. An hour later, as I was hanging up the phone, I looked up to see Dewey hobbling through my office door. I knew he’d been getting love and attention from the rest of the staff, but I could tell from his determined wobbling that he needed something more.

Sure, cats can be fun, but my relationship with Dewey was already far more complex and intimate. He was so intelligent. He was so playful. He treated people so well. I didn’t yet have a deep bond with him, but even now, near the beginning, I loved him.

And he loved me back. Not like he loved everyone else, but in a special and deeper way. The look he gave me that first morning meant something. It really did. Never was that more clear than now, as he pushed toward me with such determination. I could almost hear him saying, Where have you been? I missed you.

I reached down, scooped him up, and cradled him against my chest. I don’t know if I said it out loud or to myself, but it didn’t matter. Dewey could already read my moods, if not my mind. “I’m your momma, aren’t I?”

Dewey put his head on my shoulder, right up against my neck, and purred.