Dewey (16 page)

A
bout a month after Dewey’s escape, Jodi left Spencer. I wasn’t sure I could afford to send her to college, and she didn’t want to stay home. Jodi wanted to travel, so she took a job as a nanny in California and saved money for college. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that California was a long way from Mom.

I brought Dewey home for her last weekend. As always, he was stuck to Jodi’s side like a flesh-hugging magnet. I think he loved nighttime with her most of all. As soon as Jodi pulled down the covers, Dewey was in her bed. Actually he beat her into bed. By the time she finished brushing her teeth, he was sitting on her pillow, ready to curl up beside her. As soon as she lay down, he was plastered against her face. He wouldn’t even let her breathe. She shoved him down into the covers, but he came back. Shove. On her face. Shove. Across her neck.

“Stay down, Dewey.”

He finally relented and slept by her side, locked onto her hip. She could breathe, but she couldn’t turn over. Did he know our girl was leaving, maybe for good? When he slept with me, Dewey was in and out of bed all night, exploring the house one minute and snuggling the next. With Jodi, he never left. At one point, he wandered down to attack her feet, which were under the covers, but that was as far as he went. Jodi didn’t get any sleep that night.

The next time Dewey came to my house, Jodi was gone. He found a way to stay close to her, though, by spending the night in Jodi’s room, curled up on the floor next to her heater, no doubt dreaming of those warm summer nights spent snuggled up to Jodi’s side.

“I know, Dewey,” I said to him. “I know.”

A month later I took Dewey for his first official photograph. I’d like to say it was for sentimental reasons, that my world was changing and I wanted to freeze that moment, or that I realized Dewey was on the cusp of something far bigger than either of us ever imagined. But the real reason was a coupon. Rick Krebsbach, the town photographer, was offering pet photographs for ten dollars.

Dewey was such an easygoing cat that I convinced myself getting a professional portrait made of him, in a professional portrait studio, would be easy. But Dewey hated the studio. As soon as we walked in, his head was swiveling, his eyes looking at everything. I put him in the chair, and he immediately hopped out. I picked him up and put him in the chair again. I took one step back, and Dewey was gone.

“He’s nervous. He hasn’t been out of the library much,” I said as I watched Dewey sniff the photo backdrop.

“That’s nothing,” Rick said.

“Pets aren’t easy?”

“You have no idea,” he said as we watched Dewey dig his head under a pillow. “One dog tried to eat my camera. Another dog actually ate my fake flowers. Now that I think about it, he puked on that pillow.”

I picked Dewey up quickly, but my touch didn’t calm him. He was still looking around, more nervous than interested.

“There’s been quite a bit of unfortunate peeing. I had to throw away a sheet. I sanitize everything, of course, but to an animal like Dewey it must smell like a zoo.”

“He’s not used to other animals,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t quite right. Dewey never cared about other animals. He always ignored the Seeing Eye dog who came into the library. He even ignored the Dalmatian. This wasn’t fear; it was confusion. “He knows what’s expected of him in the library, but he doesn’t understand this place.”

“Take your time.”

A thought. “May I show Dewey the camera?”

“If you think it will help.”

Dewey posed for photographs at the library all the time, but those were personal cameras. Rick’s camera was a large, boxy, professional model. Dewey had never seen one of those before, but he was a fast learner.

“It’s a camera, Dewey. Camera. We’re here to get your picture taken.”

Dewey sniffed the lens. He leaned back and looked at it, then sniffed it again. I could feel him getting less tense, and I knew he understood.

I pointed. “Chair. Sit in the chair.”

I put him down. He sniffed up and down every leg, and twice on the seat. Then he jumped into the chair and stared right at the camera. Rick hurried over and snapped six photos.

“I can’t believe it,” he said as Dewey climbed down off the chair.

I didn’t want to tell Rick, but this happened all the time. Dewey and I had a means of communicating even I didn’t understand. He always seemed to know what I wanted, but unfortunately that didn’t mean he was always going to obey. I didn’t even have to say
brush
or
bath
; all I had to do was think about them, and Dewey disappeared. I remember passing him in the library one afternoon. He looked up at me with his usual lazy indifference.
Hi, how you doing?

I thought, “Oh, there are two knots of fur on his neck. I should get the scissors and cut them off.” As soon as the idea formed in my mind,
whoosh
, Dewey was gone.

But since his escape, Dewey had been using his powers for good, not mischief. He not only anticipated what I wanted, he did it. Not when a brushing or a bath was involved, of course, but for library business. That was one reason he was so willing to have his photograph taken. He wanted to do what was best for the library.

“He knows it’s for the library,” I told Rick, but I could tell he wasn’t buying it. Why, after all, would a cat care about a library? And how could he connect a library with a photo studio a block away? But it was the truth, and I knew it.

I picked Dewey up and petted his favorite spot, the top of his head between the ears. “He knows what a camera is. He’s not afraid of it.”

“Has he ever posed before?”

“At least two or three times a week. For visitors. He loves it.”

“That doesn’t sound like a cat.”

I wanted to tell him Dewey wasn’t just any cat, but Rick had been taking pet photographs for the past week. He’d probably heard it a hundred times already.

And yet if you see Dewey’s official photograph, which Rick shot that day (it’s on the cover of this book), you can tell immediately he’s not just another cat. He’s beautiful, yes, but more than that, he’s relaxed. He has no fear of the camera, no confusion about what’s going on. His eyes are wide and clear. His fur is perfectly groomed. He doesn’t look like a kitten, but he doesn’t look like a grown cat, either. He’s a young man getting his college graduation photograph taken, or a sailor getting a memento for his girl back home before shipping off on his first tour. His posture is remarkably straight, his head cocked, his eyes staring calmly into the camera. I smile every time I see that photo because he looks so serious. He looks like he’s trying to be strong and handsome but can’t quite pull it off because he’s so darn cute.

A few days after receiving the finished photographs, I noticed the local Shopko, a large general merchandise chain like Wal-Mart or Kmart, was holding a pet photo contest to raise money for charity. You paid a dollar to vote, and the money was used to fight muscular dystrophy. This was typical of Spencer. There was always a fund-raiser, and it was always supported by local citizens. Our radio station, KCID, promoted these efforts. The paper often ran a story. The turnout was usually overwhelming. We don’t have a ton of money in Spencer, but if someone needs a hand, we’re happy to provide it. That’s civic pride.

On a whim, I entered Dewey in the contest. The photo was for library promotion purposes, after all, and wasn’t this a perfect opportunity to promote this special aspect of the library? A few weeks later, Shopko strung a dozen photos, all of cats and dogs, on a wire in the front of the store. The town voted, and Dewey won by a landslide. He got more than 80 percent of the votes, seven times as many as the runner-up. It was ridiculous. When the store called to tell me the results, I was almost embarrassed.

Part of the reason Dewey won so overwhelmingly was the photograph. Dewey is staring at you, asking you to look back at him. He makes a personal connection, even if there is a touch of stateliness in his pose.

Part of the reason was Dewey’s looks. He’s a 1950s matinee idol, suave and cool. He’s so handsome you have to love him.

Part of the reason was Dewey’s personality. Most cats in photographs look scared to death, desperate to sniff the camera, or disgusted by the whole process—or often all three. Most dogs look like they are about to go absolutely bonkers, knock over everything in the room, get themselves wound up in an electrical cord, and then eat the camera. Dewey looks calm.

But mostly, Dewey trounced the competition because the town had adopted him. Not just the regular library patrons, I realized for the first time, but the whole town. While I wasn’t watching, while I was preoccupied with school and remodeling and Jodi, Dewey was quietly working his magic. The stories, not just about his rescue but about his life and relationships, were seeping down into the cracks and sprouting new life. He wasn’t just the library’s cat, not anymore. He was Spencer’s cat. He was our inspiration, our friend, our survivor. He was one of us. And at the same time, he was ours.

Was he a mascot? No. Did he make a difference in the way the town thought about itself? Absolutely. Not to everyone, of course, but to enough. Dewey reminded us, once again, that we were a different kind of town. We cared. We valued the small things. We understood life wasn’t about quantity but quality. Dewey was one more reason to love this hardy little town on the Iowa plains. The love of Spencer, the love of Dewey, it was all intermingled in the public mind.

Chapter 16

Iowa’s Famous Library Cat

I
can see now, in hindsight, that Dewey’s escape was a turning point, a last fling at the end of youth. After that, he was content with his lot in life: to be the cat in residence at the Spencer Public Library, a friend, a confidant, and a goodwill ambassador to all. He greeted people with new enthusiasm. He perfected the fine art of lounging in the middle of adult nonfiction, where he could be seen from the whole library, but where there was plenty of room for people to walk without stepping on him. If he was in a contemplative mood, he would lie on his stomach with his head up and his front paws crossed casually in front. We called this his Buddha pose. Dewey could zone out in that pose for an hour like a fat little man at peace with the world. His other favorite position was to sprawl out full on his back, wide open, his paws sticking out in four directions. He went completely slack, letting it all hang out.

It’s amazing how, when you stop running and start sprawling, the world comes to you. Or if not the world, then at least Iowa. Soon after the Shopko contest, Dewey was the subject of Chuck Offenburger’s Iowa Boy column in the
Des Moines Register.
Iowa Boy was one of those columns that said things like, “It was the most shocking piece of news I’d come across since the time a few years ago I found out the Cleghorn Public Library, just down the road a ways, had started checking out cake pans to its patrons.” In fact, that’s exactly what the column said, and yes, the Cleghorn Public Library, just down the road, does check out cake pans to patrons. I know at least a dozen libraries in Iowa with extensive cake pan collections. The librarians hang them on the walls. If you want to bake a special cake, for instance, a Winnie the Pooh cake for a child’s birthday party, you go to the library. Now, those are librarians who serve their communities!

When I read the article, I thought, “Wow, Dewey’s really made it.” It was one thing for a town to adopt a cat. It was even better for a region to adopt that cat, as northwest Iowa had with Dewey. The library received visitors every day from small towns and farms in surrounding counties. Summer residents of the Iowa lake country drove down to meet him, then spread the word to their neighbors and guests, who would drive down the following week. He appeared frequently in the newspapers of nearby towns. But the
Des Moines Register
! That was the daily newspaper in the state capital, which had a population of almost 500,000. The
Des Moines Register
was read all over the state. More than half a million people were probably reading about Dewey right now. That was more people than attend the Clay County Fair!

After Iowa Boy, Dewey started making regular appearances on our local television newscasts, which originated out of Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Soon he began appearing on stations in other nearby cities and states. Every segment started the same way, with a voice-over:
The Spencer Library wasn’t expecting anything more in their drop box than books on a freezing January morning. . . .
No matter how they framed it, the picture was the same. A poor feeble kitten, almost frozen to death, begging for help. The story of Dewey’s arrival at the library was irresistible.

But so was his personality. Most news crews weren’t used to filming cats—there were thousands of cats in northwest Iowa, no doubt, but none ever made it on camera—so they always started out with what seemed like a good idea: “Just have him act natural.”

“Well, there he is, sleeping in a box with his tail hanging out and his stomach oozing over the side. That’s as natural as it gets.”