Dewey's Nine Lives

After she died, he started coming to the library every morning to read the newspaper—and I knew it wasn’t to save the subscription cost. Bill was lonely at home by himself, and he wanted a place to go. What was the staff to do? We said hi, but it would have been against the ethos of a library to force the conversation past small talk. Besides, we were busy. Spencer didn’t pay us to be friends or therapists; everyone on staff had to work forty hours every week, at least, just to keep the place running.

That’s when Dewey waltzed in. As a cat, he didn’t have the social limitations of a librarian. And as our social director and official greeter, he didn’t have other work to keep him busy in the back offices. Dewey thought nothing of walking up to strangers and jumping on their laps. If they pushed him away, he’d come back two or three times, until he got the message he wasn’t wanted. Then he’d walk away, no harm done. A pushy cat, after all, is not nearly as annoying as an overly “helpful” librarian, because there’s no feeling that they are judging you or pressuring you or asking you about things you’d rather not share.

The effect when a visitor embraced Dewey’s presence, however, was profound. Within a month of Bill accepting Dewey as a lap mate, Bill’s demeanor changed. For one thing, he was smiling. I think the first time I’d seen him smile since his wife died was the second or third time Dewey jumped into his lap, pushed aside the newspaper, and demanded affection. Now he was smiling all the time, just as he had in his old job. He was interacting more with the staff, and he was staying longer each morning to hang out and chat. Watching Bill, I realized for the first time that Dewey was more than fuzzy artwork walking around the floor.

After Dewey arrived, visits to the library increased dramatically. I’m not sure he brought people through the door for their first visit, but I think he convinced them to come back. Yvonne, for instance, didn’t visit the library until Dewey was four or five months old. She had read the article about him in the Spencer Daily Reporter shortly after his rescue, but it wasn’t until summer that she decided to stop in. By then, Dewey was half grown. With his bushy tail, brilliant copper fur, and magnificent ruff, he already looked like the pampered, patrolling King of the Library. Which he was. Cool, confident Dewey was completely at ease in his surroundings. The first time Yvonne saw him, he was strutting around as if he owned the place.

What a beautiful cat, she thought.

I don’t know how they met. I assume Dewey approached Yvonne, because that’s what he always did, but she may well have been drawn to him. He was easy to talk to, for lack of a better phrase, since there’s no social pressure in petting a cat. It wasn’t until they were well into their relationship that I noticed, in passing, that Dewey was usually at her side. He rubbed her leg, sniffed her hand when she petted him, listened to her whispered greetings. When she wadded a piece of paper into a ball and threw it to him, he pounced on it, rolled on his back, and kicked it into the air with his back legs. So she threw more.

She bought him trinkets at the mall, the same toys she bought for Tobi. She liked to hold the toys out at different heights and make Dewey leap for them. One day, she held a toy at head height, about five feet off the floor. “Come on, Dewey,” she told him. “You can do it.”

Dewey stared up at the toy, then looked down. He can’t do it, Yvonne thought. Then Dewey turned and sprang—like a rocket, as Yvonne remembered it, just like a rocket—and grabbed the toy out of her hand. She stared at him in amazement, then started to laugh. “You fooled me, Dewey,” she said. “You fooled me.”

In November, she came to Dewey’s first birthday party. She’s not in the video, but I’m not surprised. Yvonne is one of those people who stands beside you for an hour until you look over and say, “Oh, I didn’t see you there.” She is the quiet but industrious worker who never seems to come out of his office; the neighbor you rarely see; the woman on the bus who never looks up from her book. It’s wrong to think of this as sad, or unfulfilling, because who are we to judge anyone’s internal life? How are we to know what a person’s days are like? Emily Dickinson’s neighbors thought of her as a sad spinster living quietly in her parents’ house, when in fact she was one of the greatest poets in the history of the English language and a frequent correspondent with the most accomplished writers of her day. Shyness isn’t a problem, after all; it’s a personality type.