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

The mood in the library was black. Yesterday we had hope. We believed it was only a matter of time. Now we believed he was gone. We continued to search, but we had looked everywhere. We were out of options. I sat down and thought about what I was going to tell the community. I would call the radio station, which was the information nexus of Spencer. They would immediately make an announcement. They could mention an orange cat without saying his name. The adults would understand, but maybe that would buy time with the children.

“Vicki!”

Then the newspaper. They would definitely run the story tomorrow. Maybe someone had taken him in.

“Vicki!”

Should we put up flyers? What about a reward?

“Vicki!”

Who was I kidding? He was gone. If he was here, we would have found . . .

“Vicki! Guess who’s home!”

I stuck my head out of the office and there he was, my big orange buddy, wrapped in the arms of Jean Hollis Clark. I rushed over and hugged him tight. He laid his head on my chest. Out of the circular clothes rack, right under my nose, my child had appeared!

“Oh, baby boy, baby boy. Don’t ever do that again.”

Dewey didn’t need me to reassure him. I could tell immediately this was no joke. Dewey was purring like he had on our first morning. He was so happy to see me, so thankful to be in my arms. He seemed happy. But I knew him so well. Underneath, in his bones, he was still shaking.

“I found him under a car on Grand Avenue,” Jean was saying. “I was going over to White Drug, and I happened to catch a glimpse of orange out of the corner of my eye.”

I wasn’t listening. I would hear the story many times over the next few days, but at that moment I wasn’t listening. I only had eyes and ears for Dewey.

“He was hunched against the wheel on the far side of the car. I called to him, but he didn’t come. He looked like he wanted to run, but he was too afraid. He must have been right there all along. Can you believe that? All those people looking for him, and he was right there all along.”

The rest of the staff was crowding around us now. I could tell they wanted to hold him, to cuddle him, but I didn’t want to let him go.

“He needs to eat,” I told them. Someone put out a fresh can of food, and we all watched while Dewey sucked it down. I doubt the cat had eaten in days.

Once he had done his business—food, water, litter box—I let the staff hold him. He was passed from hand to hand like a hero in a victory parade. When everyone had welcomed him home, we took him out to show the public. Most of them didn’t know anything had happened, but there were a few wet eyes. Dewey, our prodigal son, gone but now returned to us. You really do love something more when it’s been lost.

That afternoon I gave Dewey a bath, which he tolerated for the first time since that cold January morning so long ago. He was covered in motor oil, which took months to work out of his long fur. He had a tear in one ear and a scratch on his nose. I cleaned them gently and lovingly. Was it another cat? A loose wire? The undercarriage of a car? I rubbed his cut ear between my fingers, and Dewey didn’t even flinch. “What happened out there?” I wanted to ask him, but the two of us had already come to an understanding. We would never talk about this incident again.

Years later, I would make it a habit to prop open a side door during library board meetings. Cathy Greiner, a board member, asked me every time, “Aren’t you worried Dewey will run out?”

I looked down at Dewey, who was there as usual to attend the meeting, and he looked up at me. That look told me, as clearly as if he’d crossed his heart and hoped to die, that he wasn’t going to run. Why couldn’t everyone else see it?

“He’s not going anywhere,” I told her. “He’s committed to the library.”

And he was. For sixteen years, Dewey never went into the lobby again. He lounged by the front door, especially in the morning, but he never followed patrons out. If the doors opened and he heard trucks, he sprinted to the staff area. He didn’t want to be anywhere near a passing truck. Dewey was completely done with the outdoors.

Chapter 15

Spencer’s Favorite Cat

About 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.”