Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World

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.