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

“What’s he doing?”

“How’d he get up there?”

“Why is he up there?”

“Will he get burned?”

“What if he falls off? Will he die?”

“What if he falls on somebody? Will they die?”

When the children found out they couldn’t join him on the ceiling, they begged him to come down. “Dewey likes it up there,” we explained. “He’s playing.” Eventually even the children understood that when Dewey was on the lights, he was coming down only on his terms. He had discovered his own little seventh heaven up there.

The official remodeling took place in July 1989, because July was the library’s slow month. The children were out of school, which meant no class trips and no unofficial after-school child care. A local tax firm donated warehouse space across the street. The Spencer Public Library contained 55 shelving units, 50,000 books, 6,000 magazines, 2,000 newspapers, 5,000 albums and cassette tapes, and 1,000 genealogy books and binders, not to mention projectors, movie screens, televisions, cameras (16 mm and 8 mm), typewriters, desks, tables, chairs, card catalogs, filing cabinets, and office supplies. Everything was given a number. The number corresponded to a color-coordinated grid, which showed both its place in the warehouse and its new place in the library. On the new blue carpet, Jean Hollis Clark and I chalked the location of every shelf, table, and desk. If a shelf was put down an inch out of place, the workers had to move it because there were strict aisle width and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements. If a shelf was off an inch, the next one could be off two inches. Next thing you knew, a wheelchair would be stuck in a back corner.

The move was truly a community effort. The Rotary Club helped move the books out; the Golden Kiwanis helped move them back. Our downtown development manager, Bob Rose, moved shelving. Doris Armstrong’s husband, Jerry, spent more than a week bolting 110 new steel plates onto the ends of our shelving units, at least six bolts per plate, and never complained. Everybody volunteered: the genealogy club, the library board, teachers, parents, the nine-member board of Spencer’s Friends of the Library. The downtown merchants pitched in, too, and there were free drinks and snacks for everyone.

The remodeling went like clockwork. In exactly three weeks, our Halloween horror was replaced with a neutral blue carpet and colorful reupholstered furniture. We added two-person gliders to the children’s library so mothers could rock and read to their kids. In a closet, I found eighteen Grosvenor prints, along with seven old pen-and-ink sketches. The library didn’t have enough money to frame them, so each print was adopted by a member of the community who paid for the framing. The newly arranged, angled shelves led the eye back into the books, where thousands of colorful spines invited patrons to browse, read, relax.

We unveiled the new library with a cookies and tea open house. Nobody was more excited that day than Dewey. He had been locked away at my house for three weeks, and during that time his whole world had changed. The walls were different; the carpet was different; all the chairs and tables and bookshelves were out of place. The books even smelled different after a trip to the warehouse across the street.

But as soon as people started arriving, Dewey dashed back to the refreshment table to be front and center again. Yes, the library had changed, but what he missed most after three weeks away was people. He hated being away from his friends at the library. And they had missed him, too. As they went for their cookies, they all stopped to pet Dewey. Some lifted him onto their shoulders for a tour through the newly arranged shelving units. Others just watched him, talked about him, and smiled. The library may have changed, but Dewey was still the king.

Between 1987, the year before Dewey fell into our arms, and 1989, the year of the remodel, visits to the Spencer Public Library increased from 63,000 a year to more than 100,000. Clearly something had changed. People were thinking differently about their library, appreciating it more. And not just the citizens of Spencer. That year, 19.4 percent of our visitors were from rural Clay County. Another 18 percent came from the surrounding counties. No one could argue, seeing those numbers, that the library wasn’t a regional center.

The remodeling helped, there’s no doubt about that. So did the revitalization of Grand Avenue; and the economy, which was picking up; and the energized staff; and our new outreach and entertainment programs. But most of the change, most of what brought the new people in and finally made the Spencer Public Library a meeting house, not a warehouse, was Dewey.

Chapter 14

Dewey’s Great Escape

Late July is the best time of year in Spencer. The corn is ten feet high, golden and green. It’s so high, the farmers are required by state law to cut it to half height every mile, where the roads meet at right angles. Rural Iowa has too many intersections and not enough stop signs. The short corn helps, because at least you can see cars coming, and it doesn’t hurt the farmers. Corn ears grow in the center of the stalk, not the top.

It’s easy to neglect your job in an Iowa summer. The bright green, the warm sun, the endless fields. You leave the windows open, just to catch the scent. You spend your lunch hour down by the river, your weekends fishing near Thunder Bridge. It’s hard, sometimes, to stay inside.

“Is this heaven?” I want to say every year.

“No,” is the imaginary reply. “It’s Iowa.”

By August of 1989, the remodeling effort was over. Attendance was up. The staff was happy. Dewey had not only been accepted by the community, but was drawing people in and inspiring them. The Clay County Fair, the biggest event of the year, was just around the corner in September. I even had a month off from my master’s classes. Everything was going perfectly—except for Dewey. My contented baby boy, our library hero, was a changed cat: distracted, jumpy, and most of all, trouble.

The problem was the three weeks Dewey had spent at my house during the remodeling, staring through my window screens at the world outside. He couldn’t see the corn from my house, but he could hear the birds. He could feel the breeze. He could smell whatever cats smell when they direct their nose to the great outdoors. Now he missed those screens. There were windows in the library, but they didn’t open. You could smell the new carpet but not the outdoors. You could hear trucks, but you couldn’t make out the birds. How can you show me something so wonderful, he seemed to whine, then take it away?

Between the two sets of front doors at the Spencer Public Library was a tiny glass lobby that helped keep out the cold in the winter, since at least one set of doors was usually closed. For two years Dewey hated that lobby; when he returned from his three weeks at my house, he adored it. From the lobby, he could hear the birds. When the outer doors were open, he could smell fresh air. For a few hours in the afternoon, there was even a patch of sunlight. He pretended that was all he wanted, to sit in that patch of sunlight and listen to the birds. But we knew better. If he spent enough time in the lobby, Dewey would become curious about going through that second set of doors and into the outside world.

“Dewey, get back in here!” the front desk clerk would yell every time he followed a patron out the first set of doors. The poor cat had no chance. The circulation desk faced into the lobby, and the desk clerk always spotted him immediately. So Dewey stopped listening, especially if the clerk was Joy DeWall. Joy was the newest and youngest member of the staff and the only one who wasn’t married. She lived with her parents in a duplex where the lease didn’t allow pets, so she had a soft spot in her heart for Dewey. Dewey knew that, and he wouldn’t listen to a word she said. So Joy started coming back to get me. I was the Mom voice. Dewey always listened to me, although in this case he was so intent on disobeying I was forced to back up my threat.