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

Lasagna-loving Garfield was at the height of his popularity, so Garfield was a popular choice. There were nine votes for Tiger. Tigger was almost as popular. Morris was another multiple vote-getter, after the Nine Lives spokescat. Even cultural blips like ALF (a cuddly alien puppet with his own television show) and Spuds (after Spuds MacKenzie, the hard-drinking party dog of beer commercial fame) received votes. There were a few mean-spirited entries, like Fleabag, and some that tripped over the thin line between clever and weird, like Catgang Amadeus Taffy (a sudden sweet tooth?), Ladybooks (an odd name for a male cat), Hopsnopper, Boxcar, and Nukster.

By far the most entries, more than fifty, were for Dewey. Apparently the patrons had already grown attached to this kitten, and they didn’t want him to change. Not even his name. And to be honest, the staff didn’t, either. We, too, had grown attached to Dewey just the way he was.

Still, the name needed something. Our best option, we decided, was to think of a last name. Mary Walk, our children’s librarian, suggested Readmore. A commercial running during the Saturday morning cartoons—this was back when cartoons were only for children and shown only before noon on Saturdays—featured a cartoon cat named O. G. Readmore who encouraged kids to “read a book and take a look at the TV in your head.” I’m sure that’s where the name came from. Dewey Readmore. Close, but not quite. I suggested the last name Books.

Dewey Readmore Books. One name for the librarians, who live by the Dewey decimal system. One for the children. One for everyone.

Do We Read More Books? A challenge. A name to put us all in the mood to learn. The whole town was going to be well-read and well-informed in no time.

Dewey Readmore Books. Three names for our regal, confident, beautiful cat. I’m sure we’d have named him Sir Dewey Readmore Books if we had thought of it, but we were not only librarians, we were from Iowa. We didn’t stand on pomp and circumstance. And neither did Dewey. He always went by his first name or, occasionally, just “the Dew.”

Chapter 4

A Day in the Library

Cats are creatures of habit, and it didn’t take long for Dewey to develop a routine. When I arrived at the library every morning, he was waiting for me at the front door. He would take a few bites of his food while I hung up my jacket and bag, and then we would walk the library together, making sure everything was in place and discussing our evenings. Dewey was more a sniffer than a talker, but I didn’t mind. The library, once so cold and dead first thing in the morning, was alive and well.

After our walk, Dewey would visit the staff. If someone was having a bad morning, he’d spend extra time with her. Jean Hollis Clark had recently married and commuted forty-five minutes from Estherville to the library. You’d think that would frazzle her, but Jean was the calmest person you’ve ever met. The only thing that bothered her was the friction between a couple people on staff. She’d still be carrying the tension when she arrived the next morning, and Dewey was always there to comfort her. He had an amazing sense of who needed him, and he was always willing to give his time. But never for too long. At two minutes to nine, Dewey would drop whatever he was doing and race for the front door.

A patron was always waiting outside at nine o’clock when we opened the doors, and she would usually enter with a warm, “Hi, Dewey. How are you this morning?”

Welcome, welcome, I imagined him saying from his post to the left of the door. Why don’t you pet the cat?

No response. The early birds were usually there for a reason, which meant they didn’t have time to stop and chat with a cat.

No petting? Fine. There’s always another person where you came from—wherever that is.

It wouldn’t take long for him to find a lap, and since he’d been up for two hours that usually meant it was time for a quick nap. Dewey was already so comfortable in the library he had no problem falling asleep in public places. He preferred laps, of course, but if they weren’t available he would curl up in a box. The cards for the catalog came in small boxes about the size of a pair of baby shoes. Dewey liked to cram all four feet inside, sit down, and let his sides ooze over the edge. If the box was a little bigger, he buried his head and tail in the bottom. The only thing you could see was a big blob of back fur sticking out of the top. He looked like a muffin. One morning I found Dewey sleeping beside a box full of cards with one paw resting inside. It probably took him hours to reluctantly admit there wasn’t room for anything else.

Soon after, I watched him slowly wind his way into a half-empty tissue box. He put his two front feet through the slit on top, then delicately stepped in with the other two. Slowly he sat down on his hind legs and rolled his back end until it was wedged into the box. Then he started bending his front legs and working the front of his body into the crease. The operation took four or five minutes, but finally there was nothing left but his head sticking out in one direction and his tail sticking out in the other. I watched as he stared half-lidded into the distance, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.

In those days, Iowa provided envelopes with its tax forms, and we always put a box of them out for patrons. Dewey must have spent half his first winter curled up in that box. “I need one envelope,” a patron would say nervously, “but I don’t want to disturb Dewey. What should I do?”

“Don’t worry. He’s asleep.”

“But won’t it wake him up? He’s lying on top of them.”

“Oh, no, Dew’s dead to the world.”

The patron gently rolled Dewey to the side and then, far more carefully than necessary, slid out an envelope. He could have jerked it like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under a dinner setting, it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Cat hair comes with the envelope, no charge.”

Dewey’s other favorite resting spot was the back of the copier. “Don’t worry,” I told the confused patrons, “you can’t disturb him. He sleeps there because it’s warm. The more copies you make, the more heat the machine produces, the happier he’ll be.”

If the patrons weren’t quite sure what to do with Dewey yet, the staff had no such hesitation. One of my first decisions was that no library funds, not one penny, would ever be spent on Dewey’s care. Instead, we kept a Dewey Box in the back room. Everyone on staff tossed in their loose change. Most of us also brought in soda cans from home. Recycling soda cans was all the rage, and one of the clerks, Cynthia Behrends, would take the cans to a drop-off point every week. The whole staff was “feeding the kitty” to feed the kitty.

In return for these small contributions, we’d get endless hours of pleasure. Dewey loved drawers, and he developed a habit of popping out of them when you least expected. If you were shelving books, he’d jump onto the cart and demand a trip around the library. And when Kim Peterson, the library secretary, started typing, you knew a show was about to begin. As soon as I heard those keys, I’d put down my work and wait for the signal.

“Dewey’s after the clacker thingies again!” Kim would call out.

I’d hurry out of my office to find Dewey hunched on the back edge of Kim’s big white typewriter. His head would be jerking from side to side as the disk moved left to right, then back again, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at the clacker thing-ies, which were nothing more than the keys rising up to strike the paper. The whole staff would be there, watching and laughing. Dewey’s antics always drew a crowd.