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

Or to put it more simply, the building wasn’t right for a town like Spencer. The library had always been well run. The collection of books was exceptional, especially for a town the size of Spencer, and the directors had always been early adopters of new technologies and ideas. For enthusiasm, professionalism, and expertise, the library was top-notch. But after 1971, it was all squeezed into the wrong building. The exterior didn’t fit the surrounding area. The interior wasn’t practical or friendly. It didn’t make you want to sit down and relax. It was cold in every sense of the word.

We started the remodel—let’s call it the warming process—in May 1989, just as northwest Iowa was waking up and changing from brown to green. The lawns suddenly needed mowing, the trees on Grand Avenue were throwing out new leaves. On the farms, the plants were pushing through the soil and unfolding, and you could finally see the result of all that time spent fixing equipment, churning fields, and planting seeds. The weather turned warm. The kids brought out bicycles. At the library, after almost a year of planning, it was finally time to work.

The first stage of remodeling was painting the bare concrete walls. We decided to leave the nine-foot bookshelves bolted to the walls, so Tony Joy, our painter and the husband of staff member Sharon Joy, simply had to throw on some drop cloths and lean his ladder against the shelves. But as soon as he did, Dewey climbed up.

“All right, Dewey, down we go.”

Dewey wasn’t paying attention. He’d been in the library more than a year, but he’d never seen it from nine feet up. It was a revelation. Dewey stepped off the ladder and onto the top of the wall shelf. With a few steps, he was out of reach.

Tony moved the ladder. Dewey moved again. Tony climbed to the top, propped his elbow on the bookshelf, and looked at this stubborn cat.

“This is a bad idea, Dewey. I’m going to paint this wall, then you’re going to rub against it. Vicki’s going to see a blue cat, and then you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to get fired.” Dewey just stared down at the library. “You don’t care, do you? Well, I warned you. Vicki!”

“Right here.”

“You’ve been watching?”

“It’s a fair warning. I won’t hold you responsible.”

I wasn’t worried about Dewey. He was the most conscientious cat I’d ever known. He raced down bookshelves without a misstep. He intentionally brushed displays with his side, as cats do, without knocking them over. I knew he could not only walk a shelf without touching wet paint, but also tiptoe up a ladder without knocking off the can of paint at the top. I was more worried about Tony. It’s not easy sharing a ladder with the king of the library.

“I’m fine with the arrangement if you are,” I called up to him.

“I’ll take my chances,” Tony joked.

Within a few days, Tony and Dewey were fast friends. Or maybe I should say Tony and Dewkster, because that’s what Tony always called him. Tony felt Dewey was too soft a name for such a macho cat. He worried the local alley cats were congregating outside the children’s library window at night to make fun of his name. So Tony decided his real name wasn’t Dewey, it was the Duke, like John Wayne. “Only his close friends call him Dewkster,” Tony explained. He always called me Madame President.

“What do you think of this shade of red, Madame President?” he would ask when he saw me crossing the library.

“I don’t know. It looks pink to me.”

But pink paint wasn’t our biggest worry. Suddenly we couldn’t keep our polite, well-behaved cat off the top of the wall shelves. One day Tony looked across the library and saw Dewey on top of the wall shelves at the opposite end of the building. That was when things changed for Dewey, when he realized he could climb to the top of the wall shelves whenever he wanted. He had the run of the library up there, and some days he never wanted to come down.

“Where’s Dewey?” each member of the genealogy club would ask as they settled in for their regular meeting on the first Saturday of the month. Like all the clubs that met in the library—our Round Room was the largest free meeting space in town, and it was usually booked—the club members were used to the Dewey treatment. This started with Dewey jumping into the center of the table at the beginning of every meeting. He would survey the meeting participants, then walk around to each person at the table, sniffing her hand or looking into his face. When he had made a full circuit, he chose one person and settled into his lap. It didn’t matter what was going on in the meeting, Dewey never rushed or varied his routine. The only way to break his rhythm was to toss him out and close the door.