Dewey's Nine Lives

In those moments, Dewey came for me. He jumped on my lap; he knocked pens out of my hand; he flopped on the computer keyboard. He bumped me with his head until I relented, and then he streaked out of my office and down some dark aisle between two shelves of books. Sometimes I caught glimpses of him disappearing; sometimes, after five minutes, I still hadn’t found him. Then, just when I was ready to quit, I’d turn around and he’d be standing right behind me. And I could swear he was laughing.

Now, once again, Dewey came to me. Before my health collapsed, I had committed to writing a book, and I was no quitter. Every evening, after working as much as I could for the library, I would sit at my kitchen table and talk with my cowriter, Bret Witter, about Dewey. And the more I talked about him, the more alive he became. I could see again the way he crouched when I dangled his red yarn and how, just when I turned away, he would leap at it with all four paws. I remembered the exact way his nose twitched as he sniffed his food—and then rejected it. I laughed at the memory of the poor cat soaking wet and angry after his twice yearly baths; the way his tongue would drag as he licked his toes; how he would jam those wet paws into his ears for a good cleaning. I smiled at the way he sniffed the air vent in my office three times every day, always protecting me.

Some nights the conversations were hard. My brother’s suicide. My mother’s death. I was most terrified, I think, to talk about my mastectomy. I had kept my surgery a secret, and even a decade later, I felt vulnerable and scarred. I was afraid to admit, even to myself, that when the doctor said breast cancer, I felt my world pull away. No one would touch me; no one wanted to say those words. Only Dewey was there for me, hour after hour, day after day. Only Dewey gave me the physical contact I craved.

Some days were even harder. The first time I talked about his death—how Dewey looked into my eyes and begged, Help me, help me, as I held him in the examination room—I bawled into the telephone. It had been months, but once again I felt flattened out, stretched to the point of breaking as Dr. Beale told me, “I feel a mass. It’s an aggressive tumor. He’s in pain. There’s nothing we can do.”

But opening that door brought back other memories, too. I remembered the cold of the examination table, the worn threads of Dewey’s favorite blanket, the hum of his purring, the way he melted into my arms and laid his head against my skin. I remembered the trust in his golden eyes; the calm center beneath his terror; the closeness of our hearts as I whispered, “It’s all right, Dewey. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

I remembered looking into his eyes and realizing I was alone.

It might seem that, in my weakened condition, all this talking, writing, and crying would have been too much. The truth was the opposite: The book was keeping me alive. When you are so sick that turning over in bed makes you throw up; when the only thing you can keep in your stomach is a few crackers; when no one can give you any assurance at all that your health will ever improve, it’s easy to give up on the day. And once you start giving up on whole days, where does it end?

I never gave up on a day, because every day I looked forward to my evenings with Dewey. Even on the days when I could do nothing more than crawl to the bathroom, I could lie on the couch, a phone to my ear, and talk about the Dew.

As I read the early drafts of the book, I could almost feel him on my shoulder reading along. No, Dewey would say, that’s not how it was. When I heard that whisper of doubt in my mind, I would focus on that paragraph, or that sentence, or even that word. I had to get Dewey right. I knew that. He wasn’t just the heart and soul of the book; he was everything. The more I focused on the details, the more he returned to my mind and heart. And the more I felt his presence, the more sure I was that everything in the book was right. It wasn’t just the sight and sound; I was capturing the feeling of being around him—that old Dewey Magic—word by word.

In August, I made a decision. I was tired of listening to the experts. I was tired of driving two hours to explain my life history to a new doctor who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I was tired of falling to my knees in exhaustion at the end of the day, of pulling myself up from the sofa when the nausea overcame me. If I was going to get better, I realized, I needed to do it myself. After six months of thinking about him, I was imbued with the spirit of Dewey. I really believe that. His can-do, always-keep-going, everything-will-be-fine spirit inspired me.