Вики Майрон - Dewey - The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World

The conversation must have reached Sister’s Café, because eventually even the city council started to notice. Slowly their attitude shifted. First they stopped laughing at me. Then they started listening.

“Vicki,” the city council finally said, “maybe the library does make a difference. There’s a financial crunch right now, as you know, and we don’t have any money. But if you have the funds, you have our support.” It wasn’t much, I admit, but it was the most the library had gotten from the city in a long, long time.

Chapter 8

A Cat’s Best Friends

The whisper the city council heard in the autumn of 1988 wasn’t mine. Or at least not mine alone. It was the voice of the people bubbling up, the voices that were usually never heard: those of the older residents, the mothers, the children. Some patrons came to the library for a purpose—to check out a book, to read the newspaper, to find a magazine. Other patrons considered the library a destination. They enjoyed spending time there; they were sustained and strengthened. Every month there were more of these people. Dewey wasn’t just a novelty; he was a fixture in the community. People came to the library to see him.

Not that Dewey was an especially fawning animal. He didn’t just rush up to each person who came through the door. He made himself available at the front door if people wanted him; if they didn’t, they could step around and be on their way. That’s the subtle difference between dogs and cats, and especially a cat like Dewey: cats may need you, but they aren’t needy.

When regular patrons came in and Dewey wasn’t there to greet them, they often walked the library looking for him. First they searched the floor, figuring Dewey was hiding around a corner. Then they checked the top of the bookshelves.

“Oh, how are you, Dewey? I didn’t see you there,” they would say, reaching up to pet him. Dewey would give them the top of his head to pet, but he wouldn’t follow them. The patrons always looked disappointed.

But as soon as they forgot about him, Dewey jumped into their laps. That’s when I saw the smiles. It wasn’t just that Dewey sat with them for ten or fifteen minutes; it was that he had singled them out for special attention. By the end of his first year, dozens of patrons were telling me, “I know Dewey likes everyone, but I have a special relationship with him.”

I smiled and nodded. “That’s right, Judy,” I thought. “You and everyone else who comes into this library.”

Of course, if Judy Johnson (or Marcy Muckey or Pat Jones or any of Dewey’s other fans) hung around long enough, she was sure to be disappointed. Many times I had that conversation only to see the smile drop half an hour later when, leaving the library, she happened to notice Dewey sitting on someone else’s lap.

“Oh, Dewey,” Judy would say. “I thought it was all about me.”

She would look at him for a few seconds, but Dewey wouldn’t look up. Then she would smile. I knew what Judy was thinking. “That’s just his job. He still loves me best.”

Then there were the children. If you wanted to understand the effect Dewey had on Spencer, all you had to do was look at the children. The smiles when they came into the library, the joy as they searched and called for him, the excitement when they found him. Behind them, their mothers were smiling, too.

I knew families were suffering, that for many of these children times were hard. The parents never discussed their problems with me or anyone on staff. They probably didn’t discuss them with their closest friends. That’s not the way we are around here; we don’t talk about our personal circumstances, be they good, bad, or indifferent. But you could tell. One boy wore his old coat from the previous winter. His mother stopped wearing her makeup and, eventually, her jewelry. The boy loved Dewey; he clung to Dewey like a true friend; and his mother never stopped smiling when she saw them together. Then, around October, the boy and his mother stopped coming to the library. The family, I found out, had moved away.

That wasn’t the only boy who wore an old coat that fall, and he certainly wasn’t the only child who loved Dewey. They all wanted, even craved, his attention, so much so that they learned enough control to spend Story Hour with him. Every Tuesday morning, the murmur of excited children in the Round Room, where Story Hour was held, would be suddenly punctuated by a cry of “Dewey’s here!” A mad rush would ensue as every child in the room tried to pet Dewey at the same time.

“If you don’t settle down,” our children’s librarian, Mary Walk, would tell them, “Dewey has to go.”

A barely contained hush would fall over the room as the children took their seats, trying their best to contain their excitement. When they were relatively calm, Dewey would begin sliding between them, rubbing against each child and making them all giggle. Soon kids were grabbing at him and whispering, “Sit with me, Dewey. Sit with me.”

“Children, don’t make me warn you again.”

“Yes, Mary.” The children always called Mary Walk by her first name. She never got into the habit of Miss Mary.

Dewey, knowing he had pushed the limit, would stop wandering and curl up in the lap of one lucky child. He didn’t let a child grab him and hold him in her lap; he chose to spend time with her. And every week it was a different child.

Once he had chosen a lap, Dewey usually sat quietly for the whole hour. Unless a movie was being shown. Then he would jump on a table, curl his legs under his body, and watch the screen intently. When the credits rolled he feigned boredom and jumped down. Before the children could ask, “Where’s Dewey?” he was gone.

There was only one child Dewey couldn’t win over. She was four years old when Dewey arrived, and she came to the library every week with her mother and older brother. Her brother loved Dewey. The girl hung back as far as possible, looking tense and nervous. Her mother eventually confided in me that the girl was afraid of four-legged animals, especially cats and dogs.

What an opportunity! I knew Dewey could do for this girl what he had done for the children with cat allergies, who finally had a cat to spend time with. I suggested exposing her gently to Dewey, first by looking through the window at him and then with supervised meetings.

“This is an ideal job for our gentle, loving Dewey,” I told her mother. I was so enthusiastic, I even researched the best books to help the girl overcome her fear.

Her mother didn’t want to go that route, so instead of trying to change the girl’s feelings about cats, I accommodated her. When the girl came to the door and waved at the clerk on the front desk, we found Dewey and locked him in my office. Dewey hated being locked in my office, especially when patrons were in the library. You don’t have to do this , I could hear him howling. I know who she is! I won’t go near her!

I hated to lock him away, and I hated to miss the opportunity for Dewey to make this little girl’s life better, but what could I do? “Don’t force it, Vicki,” I told myself. “It will come.”

With that in mind I planned a low-key celebration for Dewey’s first birthday: just a cake made out of cat food for Dewey, and a normal one for the patrons. We didn’t know exactly when he was born, but Dr. Esterly had estimated he was eight weeks old when we found him, so we counted back to late November and chose the eighteenth. We found Dewey on January 18, so we figured that was his lucky day.