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

Finally, on the fifth day, I caved and gave Dewey his favorite can of Fancy Feast. He gobbled it down without even coming up for air. That’s it , he said, licking his lips and then stepping to the corner for a long tongue bath of his face and ears. We all feel better now, don’t we?

That night I went out and bought him an armful of cans. I couldn’t fight anymore. “Better a constipated cat,” I thought, “than a dead one.”

For two months Dewey was happy. I was happy. All was right with the world.

Then Dewey decided he didn’t like Fancy Feast, chunky chicken flavor. He wasn’t going to eat another bite of it. He wanted something new, and make it snappy, thank you very much. I bought a new flavor, something in the moist smelly blob category. Dewey took one sniff and walked away. Nope, not that one, either.

“You’ll eat it, young man, or no dessert for you.”

At the end of the day, the food was still there, dried out and crusty. What was I supposed to do? The cat was sick! It took five tries, but I found a flavor he liked. It only lasted a few weeks. Then he wanted something new. Oh, brother. I hadn’t just ceded the battlefield; I’d completely lost the war.

By 1997 the situation was completely absurd. How could you not laugh at an entire bookshelf full of cans of cat food? I’m not exaggerating. We kept Dewey’s items on two shelves in the staff area, and one of them was only for food. We had at least five flavors on hand at all times. The Dew had Midwestern taste. His favorite flavors were beef, chunky chicken, beef & liver, and turkey, but you never knew when another flavor would strike his fancy. He hated seafood, but he fell in love with shrimp. For a week. Then he wouldn’t touch it.

Unfortunately Dewey was still constipated, so on Dr. Esterly’s orders I copied a page out of a calendar and hung it on the wall. Every time someone found a present in Dewey’s litter box, they marked the date. The calendar was known throughout the office as Dewey’s Poop Chart.

I can only imagine what someone like Sharon thought. She was very funny, and she loved Dewey, but she was also fastidious. Now we were discussing poop on a regular basis. She must have thought I was nuts. But she marked that chart, and she never complained. Of course, Dewey only pooped a couple times a week, so we weren’t exactly wearing down the nibs of our pens.

When Dewey hadn’t gone for three days, we locked him in the back closet for a romantic date with his litter. Dewey hated being locked anywhere, especially a closet. I hated it almost as much as Dewey, especially in the winter because the closet was unheated.

“It’s for your own good, Dew.”

After a half hour, I let him out. If no evidence turned up in the litter box, I gave him an hour to roam and then locked him in for another half hour. No poop, back in the box. Three times was the limit. After three times, he wasn’t holding out, he really couldn’t go.

This strategy completely backfired. Dewey soon became so pampered he refused to use the bathroom unless someone took him to the box. He stopped going completely at night, which meant first thing in the morning I had to carry him—yes, carry him—to his litter. Talk about being the king!

I know, I know. I was a sucker. A spoiler of cats. But what could I do? I knew how bad Dewey felt. Not just because I had a connection with him, but because I was no stranger to lifelong illness. I’d been in and out of the hospital more times than most doctors. I’d been medevaced to Sioux Falls twice. And I had been through the Mayo Clinic for irritable bowel syndrome, hyperthyroidism, severe migraines, and Graves’ disease, among others. At one point I had hives on my legs for two years. It turned out I was allergic to the prayer kneeler at church. A year later I suddenly froze. I couldn’t move for half an hour. The staff had to carry me to a car, drive me home, and lay me out in bed. It happened again at a wedding. I had a forkful of wedding cake halfway to my mouth and I couldn’t put my arm down. I couldn’t even move my tongue to tell anyone. Thank God my friend Faith was there. The cause turned out to be a sudden, severe drop in blood pressure exacerbated by one of my medications.

But worst, by far, were the lumps in my breasts. Even now, I don’t feel entirely comfortable talking about it. I’ve shared this experience with very few people, and it’s difficult to break that silence. I don’t want anyone to look at me as less than a complete woman or, even worse, some kind of fraud.

Of all the things in my life—the alcoholic husband, the welfare, the surprise hysterectomy—my double mastectomy was by far the hardest. The worst part wasn’t the procedure, although it was probably the most physically painful thing I’ve ever endured. The worst part was the decision. I agonized over it for more than a year. I traveled to Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and Omaha, more than three hours away, to consult physicians, but I couldn’t make up my mind.

Mom and Dad encouraged me to have the procedure. They said, “You have to do it. You have to get healthy. Your life is at stake.”

I talked to my friends, who had helped me through the end of my marriage and so many problems since, but for the first time they didn’t talk back. They couldn’t deal with it, they admitted later. Breast cancer hit too close to the bone.

I needed to have the surgery. I knew that. If I didn’t, it was only a matter of time before I heard the word cancer . But I was a single woman. I dated fairly regularly, if not particularly successfully. My friend Bonnie and I still laugh about the Cowboy, whom I met at a dance in West Okoboji. We met up in Sioux City, and he took me to one of those country places with sawdust on the floor. I can’t tell you about the food because a fight broke out, someone pulled a knife, and I spent twenty minutes huddled in the women’s bathroom. The Cowboy graciously took me back to his house and showed me—I kid you not—how to make bullets. On the way back, he drove me through the stockyards. He found it romantic to see the holding pens in the moonlight.

And yet despite the flops, I still hoped for the right man. I didn’t want that hope to die. But who could love me without my breasts? It wasn’t losing my sexuality I was worried about. It was losing my femininity, my identity as a woman, my self-image. My parents didn’t understand; my friends were too scared to help. What could I do?

One morning there was a knock on my office door. It was a woman I had never met. She came in, closed the door, and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m a patient of Dr. Kolegraff’s. He sent me to see you. Five years ago, I had a double mastectomy.”

We talked for two hours. I don’t remember her name, and I haven’t seen her since (she wasn’t from Spencer), but I remember every word. We talked about everything—the pain, the procedure, the recovery, but mostly the emotions. Did she still feel like a woman? Was she still herself? What did she see when she looked in the mirror?

When she left, I not only knew the right decision, I was ready to make it.

The double mastectomy was a multistep process. First, they took my breasts. Then they installed temporary implants called expanders. I had ports under my arms—literally tubes that stuck out from my flesh—and every two weeks I received a saline injection to expand the size of my chest and stretch the skin. Unfortunately the dangers of silicone implants exploded into the news during my first weeks of recovery, and the FDA placed a temporary ban on new implants. I ended up keeping my four-week temporary expanders for eight months. I had so much scar tissue under my armpits that I got shooting pains down my sides whenever the barometric pressure changed. For years, Joy asked me every time she saw a dark cloud, “Vicki, is it going to rain?”