Dewey (2 page)

After the weekend, the drop box would also be full of books, so every Monday I loaded them onto one of our book carts so the clerks could process and shelve them later in the day. When I came back with the cart on this particular Monday morning, Jean was standing quietly in the middle of the room.

“I heard a noise.”

“What kind of noise?”

“From the drop box. I think it’s an animal.”

“A what?”

“An animal. I think there’s an animal in the drop box.”

That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded more like an old man struggling to clear his throat. But I doubted it was an old man. The opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze. It was an animal, I had little doubt of that, but what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over to the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk.

The first thing I felt was a blast of freezing air. Someone had jammed a book into the return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside; maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. You could have kept frozen meat in there. I was still catching my breath when I saw the kitten.

It was huddled in the front left corner of the box, its head down, its legs tucked underneath it, trying to appear as small as possible. The books were piled haphazardly to the top of the box, partially hiding it from view. I lifted one gingerly for a better look. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly. Then it lowered its head and sank down into its hole. It wasn’t trying to appear tough. It wasn’t trying to hide. I don’t even think it was scared. It was just hoping to be saved.

I know melting can be a cliché, but I think that’s what actually happened to me at that moment: I lost every bone in my body. I am not a mushy person. I’m a single mother and a farm girl who has steered her life through hard times, but this was so, so . . . unexpected.

I lifted the kitten out of the box. My hands nearly swallowed it. We found out later it was eight weeks old, but it looked no more than eight days old, if that. It was so thin I could see every rib. I could feel its heart beating, its lungs pumping. The poor kitten was so weak it could barely hold up its head, and it was shaking uncontrollably. It opened its mouth, but the sound, which came two seconds later, was weak and ragged.

And cold. That’s what I remember most, because I couldn’t believe a living animal could be so cold. It felt like there was no warmth at all. So I cradled the kitten in my arms to share my heat. It didn’t fight. Instead, it snuggled into my chest, then laid its head against my heart.

“Oh, my golly,” said Jean.

“The poor baby,” I said, squeezing tighter.

“It’s adorable.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. We were just staring at the kitten. Finally Jean said, “How do you think it got in there?”

I wasn’t thinking about last night. I was only thinking about right now. It was too early to call the veterinarian, who wouldn’t be in for an hour. But the kitten was so cold. Even in the warmth of my arms, I could feel it shaking.

“We’ve got to do something,” I said.

Jean grabbed a towel, and we wrapped the little fellow up until only its nose was sticking out, its huge eyes staring from the shadows in disbelief.

“Let’s give it a warm bath,” I said. “Maybe that will stop the shivering.”

I filled the staff room sink with warm water, testing it with my elbow as I clutched the kitten in my arms. It slid into the sink like a block of ice. Jean found some shampoo in the art closet, and I rubbed the kitten slowly and lovingly, almost petting it. As the water turned grayer and grayer, the kitten’s wild shivering turned to soft purring. I smiled. This kitten was tough. But it was so very young. When I finally lifted it out of the sink, it looked like a newborn: huge lidded eyes and big ears sticking out from a tiny head and an even smaller body. Wet, defenseless, and meowing quietly for its mother.

We dried it with the blow dryer we used for drying glue at craft time. Within thirty seconds, I was holding a beautiful, long-haired orange tabby. The kitten had been so filthy, I had thought it was gray.

By this time Doris and Kim had arrived, and there were four people in the staff room, each cooing over the kitten. Eight hands touched it, seemingly at once. The other three staffers talked over one another while I stood silently cradling the kitten like a baby and rocking back and forth from foot to foot.

“Where did it come from?”

“The drop box.”

“No!”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

I glanced up. They were all looking at me. “A boy,” I said.

“He’s beautiful.”

“How old is he?”

“How did he get in the box?”

I wasn’t listening. I only had eyes for the kitten.

“It’s so cold.”

“Bitterly cold.”

“The coldest morning of the year.”

A pause, then: “Someone must have put him in the box.”

“That’s awful.”

“Maybe they were trying to save him. From the cold.”

“I don’t know . . . he’s so helpless.”

“He’s so young.”

“He’s so beautiful. Oh, he’s breaking my heart.”

I put him down on the table. The poor kitten could barely stand. The pads on all four of his paws were frostbitten, and over the next week they would turn white and peel off. And yet the kitten managed to do something truly amazing. He steadied himself on the table and slowly looked up into each face. Then he began to hobble. As each person reached to pet him, he rubbed his tiny head against her hand and purred. Forget the horrible events in his young life. Forget the cruel person who shoved him down that library drop box. It was as if, from that moment on, he wanted to personally thank every person he ever met for saving his life.

By now it had been twenty minutes since I pulled the kitten out of the drop box, and I’d had plenty of time to think through a few things—the once common practice of keeping library cats, my ongoing plan to make the library more friendly and appealing, the logistics of bowls and food and cat litter, the trusting expression on the kitten’s face when he burrowed into my chest and looked up into my eyes. So I was more than prepared when someone finally asked, “What should we do with him?”

“Well,” I said, as if the thought had just occurred to me, “maybe we can keep him.”

Chapter 2

A Perfect Addition

T
he most amazing thing about the kitten was how happy he was that first day. Here he was in a new environment, surrounded by eager strangers who wanted nothing more than to squeeze him, fondle him, and coo over him, and he was perfectly calm. No matter how many times we passed him from hand to hand, and no matter what position we held him in, he was never jumpy or fidgety. He never tried to bite or get away. Instead, he just melted into each person’s arms and stared up into her eyes.

And that was no small feat, because we didn’t leave him alone for a second. If someone had to set him down—for instance, because there was actual work to do—there were always at least five sets of hands ready to grab him, hold him, and love him. In fact, when I set him down at closing time that first night, I had to watch him for five minutes to make sure he could totter all the way to his food dish and litter box. I don’t think his poor frostbitten feet had touched the ground all day.

The next morning, Doris Armstrong brought in a warm pink blanket. Doris was the grandparent on staff, our mother hen. We all watched as she bent down and scratched the kitten under the chin, then folded the blanket and put it in a cardboard box. The kitten stepped gingerly into the box and curled his legs underneath his body for warmth. His eyes closed in blissful contentment, but he had only a few seconds to rest before someone snatched him up and wrapped him in her arms. A few seconds, but it was enough. The staff had been polarized for years. Now we were all making accommodations, coming together as a family, and the kitten was clearly happy to call the library home.

It wasn’t until late the second morning that we finally shared our little guy with someone outside the staff. That person was Mary Houston, Spencer’s local historian and a member of the library board. The staff may already have accepted the kitten, but keeping him wasn’t our decision. The previous day I had called the mayor, Squeege Chapman, who was in his last month in office. As I suspected, he didn’t care. Squeege wasn’t a reader; I’m not even sure he knew Spencer had a library. The city attorney, my second call, didn’t know of any statutes barring animals from the library and didn’t feel compelled to spend time looking for one. Good enough for me. The library board, a panel of citizens appointed by the mayor to oversee the library, had the final say. They didn’t object to the idea of a library cat, but I can’t say they were enthusiastic. Their response was more “Let’s give it a try” than “Heck, yeah, we’re behind you a hundred percent.”

That’s why meeting a board member like Mary was so important. Agreeing to have an animal in the library was one thing; agreeing on
this
animal was another thing entirely. You can’t just put any cute cat in a library. If he’s not friendly, he’s going to make enemies. If he’s too shy or scared, nobody will stand up for him. If he’s not patient, he’s going to bite. If he’s too rambunctious, he’s going to make a mess. And above all, he has to love being around people, and he has to make those people love him back. In short, it has to be the right cat.

I had no doubt about our boy. From the moment he looked up into my eyes that first morning, so calm and content, I knew he was right for the library. There wasn’t a flutter in his heart as I held him in my arms; there wasn’t a moment of panic in his eyes. He trusted me completely. He trusted everyone on staff completely. That’s what made him so special: his complete and unabashed trust. And because of it, I trusted him, too.

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a little apprehensive when I motioned Mary into the staff area. As I took the kitten in my arms and turned to face her, I felt a flutter in
my
heart, a moment of doubt. When the kitten had looked into my eyes, something else had happened, too; we had made a connection. He was more than just a cat to me. It had only been a day, but already I couldn’t stand the thought of being without him.

“There he is,” Mary exclaimed with a smile. I held him a little more tightly as she reached out to pet him on the top of the head, but Dewey didn’t even stiffen. Instead, he stretched out his neck to sniff her hand.

“Oh, my,” Mary said. “He’s handsome.”

Handsome. I heard it over and over again the next few days because there was no other way to describe him. This was a handsome cat. His coat was a mix of vibrant orange and white with subtle darker stripes. It grew longer as he got older, but as a kitten it was thick and stylishly long only around his neck. A lot of cats have pointy noses, or their mouths jut out a bit too far, or they’re a little lopsided, but this kitten’s face was perfectly proportioned. And his eyes, those huge golden eyes.

But it wasn’t just his looks that made him beautiful; it was also his personality. If you cared at all about cats, you just had to hold him. There was something in his face, in the way he looked at you, that called out for love.

“He likes to be cradled,” I said, gently sliding him into Mary’s arms. “No, on his back. That’s right. Like a baby.”

“A one-pound baby.”

“I don’t think he even weighs that much.”

The kitten shook his tail and nestled down into Mary’s arms. He didn’t just trust the library staff instinctively, it turned out; he trusted everyone.

“Oh, Vicki,” Mary said. “He’s adorable. What’s his name?”

“We’re calling him Dewey. After Melville Dewey. But we haven’t really decided on a name yet.”

“Hi, Dewey. Do you like the library?” Dewey stared into Mary’s face, then pushed his head against her arm. Mary looked up with a smile. “I could hold him all day.”

But, of course, she didn’t. She put Dewey back into my arms, and I took him around the corner. The entire staff was waiting for us. “That went well,” I said. “One down, ten thousand to go.”

Slowly we started introducing Dewey to a few regulars known to love cats. He was still weak, so we passed him directly into their arms. Marcie Muckey came in that second day. Instantly smitten. Mike Baehr and his wife, Peg, loved him. “This is a great idea,” they said, which was nice to hear since Mike was on the library board. Pat Jones and Judy Johnson thought him adorable. Actually there were four Judy Johnsons in Spencer. Two were regular library users, and both were Dewey fans. How big is a town of 10,000 people? Big enough to have four Judy Johnsons, three furniture stores, two commercial streets with stoplights, but only one mansion. Everyone calls it The Mansion. Typical Iowa—no fuss, no bother, just the facts.

A week later, Dewey’s story ran on the front page of the
Spencer Daily Reporter
under the headline “Purr-fect Addition Made to Spencer Library.” The article, which took up half the page, told the story of Dewey’s miraculous rescue and was accompanied by a color photograph of a tiny orange kitten staring shyly but confidently into the camera from atop an old-fashioned pull-drawer card catalog.