Dewey (17 page)

Five seconds later: “Maybe he can jump or something?”

Dewey always gave them what they wanted. He jumped over the camera for a flying action shot. He walked between two displays to show his dexterity. He ran and jumped off the end of a shelf. He played with a child. He played with his red yarn. He sat quietly on top of the computer and stared into the camera, the model of decorum. He wasn’t showing off. Posing for the camera was part of Dewey’s job as publicity director for the library, so he did it. Enthusiastically.

Dewey’s appearance on
Living in Iowa
, an Iowa Public Television series that focuses on issues, events, and people in the state of Iowa, was typical. The
Living in Iowa
crew met me at the library at seven thirty in the morning. Dewey was ready. He rolled. He jumped between the shelves. He walked up and put his nose on the camera. He stuck right by the side of the host, a beautiful young woman, winning her over.

“Can I hold him?” she asked.

I showed her the Dewey Carry—over the left shoulder, with his behind in the crook of your arm, head over your back. If you wanted to hold him for any length of time, you had to use the Dewey Carry.

“He’s doing it!” the host whispered excitedly as Dewey draped over her shoulder.

Dewey’s head popped up.
What did she say?

“How do I get him to calm down?”

“Just pet him.”

The host stroked his back. Dewey lay his head on her shoulder and cuddled against her neck. “He’s doing it! He’s really doing it! I can feel him purring.” She smiled at her cameraman and whispered, “Are you getting this?”

I was tempted to tell her, “Of course he’s doing it. He does it for everyone,” but why spoil her excitement?

Dewey’s episode aired a few months later. It was called “A Tale of Two Kitties.” (Yes, it’s a pun on Charles Dickens.) The other kitty was Tom, who lived in Kibby’s Hardware in Conrad, Iowa, a small town in the middle of the state. Like Dewey, Tom was found on the coldest night of the year. Store owner Ralph Kibby took the frozen stray to the vet’s office. “They gave him sixty dollars’ worth of shots,” he said on the program, “and said if he’s still alive in the morning he may have a chance.” As I watched the show, I realized why the host was so happy that morning. There were at least thirty seconds of footage of Dewey lying on her shoulder; the best she could get from Tom was a sniff of her finger.

Dewey wasn’t the only one expanding his horizons. During my master’s program I had become very active in state library circles, and after graduation I was elected president of the Iowa Small Library Association, an advocacy group for libraries in towns of less than 10,000 people. Advocacy, at least when I joined, was a stretch. The group had a serious inferiority complex. “We’re small,” they thought. “Who cares about us? Let’s just stick with milk, cookies, and a little gossip. That’s all we’re good for.”

But I had seen firsthand that small didn’t mean irrelevant, and I was inspired. “You don’t think small towns matter?” I asked them. “You don’t think your library can make a difference? Look at Dewey. Every librarian in the state knows Dewey Readmore Books. He’s appeared on the cover of the Iowa library newsletter twice. He appeared twice in the National Library Cat Society newsletter, and he gets fan mail from England and Belgium. He was featured in the state library newsletter . . . of Illinois. I get calls every week from librarians wondering how they can convince their board to let them have a cat. Does that sound irrelevant to you?”

“So we should all get cats?”

“No. You should believe in yourselves.”

And they did. Two years later, the Iowa Small Library Association was one of the most active and respected advocacy groups in the state.

Dewey’s breakthrough, though, came not through my efforts but through the mail. One afternoon the library received a package containing twenty copies of the June/July 1990 issue of
Country
, a national magazine with a circulation of more than five million. It wasn’t unusual for us to receive magazines from publishers hoping to drum up library subscriptions, but twenty copies? I had never read
Country
, and I had never spoken to anyone from
Country
, but I liked its slogan: For Those Who Live In or Long For The Country. I decided to flip through it. Right there, on page 57, was a two-page, full-color article about Dewey Readmore Books of the Spencer Public Library, complete with photographs sent in by a local woman I didn’t even know but whose daughter frequented the library. Clearly she had been going home and telling her mother about the Dew.

It was just a small article, but its impact was extraordinary. For years, visitors told me how much it inspired them. Writers, calling for information for other articles about Dewey, often cited it. More than a decade later, I opened the mail to find a perfectly preserved copy of the article, neatly torn out of the magazine near the fold. The woman wanted me to know how much Dewey’s story meant to her.

In Spencer, people who had forgotten about Dewey or who had never shown any interest in him took notice. Even the crowd at Sister’s Café perked up. The worst of the farm crisis had passed, and our leaders were looking for a way to attract new business. Dewey was getting the kind of national exposure they could only dream of, and of course that energy and excitement was rubbing off on the town. Sure, nobody has ever built a factory because of a cat, but nobody has ever built a factory in a town they’d never heard of, either. Once again, Dewey was doing his part, not just in Spencer this time but out there in the larger world, beyond the cornfields of Iowa.

The biggest change, though, was pride. Dewey’s friends were proud of him, and everyone was proud to have him in town. One man, back for his twentieth high school reunion, stopped by the library to flip through newspapers from that year. Dewey, of course, won him over immediately. But once he heard about Dewey’s friends and saw the articles about him, he became truly impressed. He wrote later to thank us and say he’d been telling everyone in New York about his wonderful hometown and its beloved library cat.

He wasn’t the only one. We had three or four people a week coming into the library to show Dewey off. “We’re here to see the famous cat,” an older man said, approaching the desk.

“He’s sleeping in the back. I’ll go get him.”

“Thanks,” he said, motioning to a younger woman with a little blond girl hiding behind her leg. “I wanted my granddaughter Lydia to meet him. She’s in town from Kentucky.”

When Lydia saw Dewey, she smiled and looked up at her grandfather as if for permission. “Go ahead, sweetie. Dewey won’t bite.” The girl tentatively stretched out her hand to Dewey; two minutes later she was stretched out on the floor, petting him.

“See?” her grandfather said to the little girl’s mother. “I told you it was worth the trip.” I suppose he could have meant Dewey or the library, but I suspect he was referring to something more.

Later, while the mother was petting Dewey with her daughter, the grandfather came up to me and said, “Thanks so much for adopting Dewey.” It seemed he wanted to say more, but I think we both understood he had already said enough. Thirty minutes later, as they were leaving, I heard the young woman tell the older man, “You were right, Dad. That was great. I wish we had come by sooner.”

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” the little girl said. “We’ll see him next year, too.”

Pride. Confidence. Assurance that this cat, this library, this experience, maybe even this town, really was special. Dewey wasn’t any more beautiful or friendly after the
Country
article; in fact, fame never changed him. All Dewey ever wanted was a warm place to nap, a fresh can of food, and love and attention from every person who ever stepped foot in the Spencer Public Library. But at the same time, Dewey
had
changed, because now people looked at him differently.

The proof? Before the
Country
article, nobody took the blame for shoving poor Dewey into our book return. Everybody knew the story, but nobody confessed. After Dewey hit the media, eleven different people came up to me confidentially and swore on their mother’s grave (or their mother’s eye, if Mom was alive) that they had shoved Dewey down that hole. They weren’t taking blame; they were taking credit. “I always knew it would turn out well,” they said.

Eleven people! Can you believe it? That must have been one wild, cat-saving alley party.

THE DAILY ROUTINE

As developed by Dewey Readmore Books soon after his regrettable romp outside the Spencer Public Library, and followed for the rest of his life.

7:30 a.m. Mom Arrives.
Demand food, but don’t be too hasty. Watch everything she does. Follow at her heels. Make her feel special.

8:00 a.m. Staff Arrives.
Spend an hour checking in with everyone. Find out who is having a tough morning and give them the honor of petting me for as long as they want. Or until . . .

8:58 a.m. Prep Time.
Take up position by the front door, ready for first patron of the day. Also has the added benefit of alerting distracted staff to current time. I hate it when they open late.

9:00–10:30 a.m. Doors Open.
Greet patrons. Follow the nice ones, ignore the mean ones, but give everyone a chance to brighten their day by paying attention to me. Petting me is a gift to you for visiting the library.

10:30 a.m. Find Lap for Nap.
Laps are for naps, not playing. Playing in laps is for kittens.

11:30–11:45 a.m. Lounge.
Middle of adult nonfiction, head up, paws crossed in front. The humans call this the Buddha pose. I call it the Lion. Hakuna Matata. No, I don’t know what it means, but the kids keep talking about it.

11:45 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Sprawl.
When it gets too tiring to hold my head up, assume the sprawl: full out on back, paws sticking out in four directions. Petting is assured. But don’t fall asleep. Fall asleep, and you’re vulnerable to a belly wrestle attack. I hate the belly wrestle attack.

12:15–12:30 p.m. Lunch in the Staff Room.
Anybody got yogurt? No? Then never mind.

12:30–1:00 p.m. Cart Ride!
When the afternoon clerks shelve books, jump on the cart and hitch a ride around the library. Oh, man, it’s relaxing to go completely limp and let my legs hang down between the bars of the metal rack.

1:00–3:55 p.m. Afternoon Free Time.
See how the day is going. Mix in a trip up to the lights with more lap time. Greet the afternoon crowd. Spend ten minutes with Mom. Fur licking is encouraged, not mandatory. And don’t forget to find a nice box to nap in. As if it’s possible to forget that!

3:55 p.m. Dinner.
They keep thinking dinnertime is four o’clock. If I sit here long enough, they’ll eventually learn.

4:55 p.m. Mom Leaves.
Jump around so she’ll remember you want to play. A running jump off a bookshelf, complete with somersault, works every time.

5:30 p.m. Play. Mom calls it Boodha track.
I call it the ball thingy because there’s nothing better than batting that ball around that track. Except for my red yarn. I absolutely love my red yarn. Does anyone want to dangle it for me?

8:55 p.m. Last Shift Leaves.
Repeat 4:55 routine, but don’t expect the same results unless Joy’s working the night shift. Joy always finds time to wad up paper and toss it across the library. Sprint after the paper as fast as possible, but once you get there, always ignore it.

9:00 p.m.–7:30 a.m. My Time!
None of your business, nosy.

Chapter 17

Dewey in the Modern World

I
’m not naive. I know not everyone in Spencer embraced Dewey. For instance, that woman still wrote regular letters threatening to bring her cow downtown if the city didn’t stop the injustice, the horror, of a cat living in a public building. She was the most vocal, but she certainly wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand the Dewey phenomenon.

“What’s so special about that cat?” they would say over a cup of coffee at Sister’s Café. “He never leaves the library. He sleeps a lot. He doesn’t
do
anything.”

By which they meant Dewey didn’t create jobs. Dewey was appearing regularly in magazines, newspapers, and on the radio around the country, but he wasn’t improving our municipal parks. He wasn’t paving roads. He wasn’t out recruiting new businesses. The worst of the farm crisis had passed; spirits were rising; it was time for Spencer to spread its wings and attract new employers to our plucky Midwest town fairly far off the beaten track.

The Spencer economic development commission scored its first big triumph in 1992 when Montfort, a large meatpacking company headquartered in Colorado, decided to lease the slaughterhouse on the north end of town. In 1952, when local businessmen developed the property, the plant was the pride of Spencer. It was locally owned, locally run, and employed local workers at top wages. In 1974, the salary was fifteen dollars an hour, the best-paying job in town. Trucks lined up for a mile waiting to be unloaded. The company began packaging several products under a Spencer Foods label. That label was a source of pride, especially when you’d drive to Sioux Falls or down to Des Moines and see the Spencer name in the big new grocery stores.