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

When Jodi was three, I lost her at the Mankato Mall. I looked down and she was gone. I almost choked on my own heart, it jumped into my throat so fast. When I couldn’t find her, I became absolutely frantic. My baby. My baby. I couldn’t even think. All I could do was rip clothes off hangers, run the aisles faster and faster. I finally found her hiding in the middle of a circular rack of clothes, laughing. She had been there all along. But, oh, how I died when I thought she was gone.

I felt the same way now. That’s when I realized Dewey wasn’t just the library’s cat. My grief wasn’t for the town of Spencer, or for its library, or even for its children. The grief was for me. He might live at the library, but Dewey was my cat. I loved him. That’s not just words. I didn’t just love something about him. I loved him. But my baby boy, my baby Dewey, was gone.

The mood in the library was black. Yesterday we had hope. We believed it was only a matter of time. Now we believed he was gone. We continued to search, but we had looked everywhere. We were out of options. I sat down and thought about what I was going to tell the community. I would call the radio station, which was the information nexus of Spencer. They would immediately make an announcement. They could mention an orange cat without saying his name. The adults would understand, but maybe that would buy time with the children.

“Vicki!”

Then the newspaper. They would definitely run the story tomorrow. Maybe someone had taken him in.

“Vicki!”

Should we put up flyers? What about a reward?

“Vicki!”

Who was I kidding? He was gone. If he was here, we would have found . . .

“Vicki! Guess who’s home!”

I stuck my head out of the office and there he was, my big orange buddy, wrapped in the arms of Jean Hollis Clark. I rushed over and hugged him tight. He laid his head on my chest. Out of the circular clothes rack, right under my nose, my child had appeared!

“Oh, baby boy, baby boy. Don’t ever do that again.”

Dewey didn’t need me to reassure him. I could tell immediately this was no joke. Dewey was purring like he had on our first morning. He was so happy to see me, so thankful to be in my arms. He seemed happy. But I knew him so well. Underneath, in his bones, he was still shaking.

“I found him under a car on Grand Avenue,” Jean was saying. “I was going over to White Drug, and I happened to catch a glimpse of orange out of the corner of my eye.”

I wasn’t listening. I would hear the story many times over the next few days, but at that moment I wasn’t listening. I only had eyes and ears for Dewey.

“He was hunched against the wheel on the far side of the car. I called to him, but he didn’t come. He looked like he wanted to run, but he was too afraid. He must have been right there all along. Can you believe that? All those people looking for him, and he was right there all along.”

The rest of the staff was crowding around us now. I could tell they wanted to hold him, to cuddle him, but I didn’t want to let him go.

“He needs to eat,” I told them. Someone put out a fresh can of food, and we all watched while Dewey sucked it down. I doubt the cat had eaten in days.

Once he had done his business—food, water, litter box—I let the staff hold him. He was passed from hand to hand like a hero in a victory parade. When everyone had welcomed him home, we took him out to show the public. Most of them didn’t know anything had happened, but there were a few wet eyes. Dewey, our prodigal son, gone but now returned to us. You really do love something more when it’s been lost.

That afternoon I gave Dewey a bath, which he tolerated for the first time since that cold January morning so long ago. He was covered in motor oil, which took months to work out of his long fur. He had a tear in one ear and a scratch on his nose. I cleaned them gently and lovingly. Was it another cat? A loose wire? The undercarriage of a car? I rubbed his cut ear between my fingers, and Dewey didn’t even flinch. “What happened out there?” I wanted to ask him, but the two of us had already come to an understanding. We would never talk about this incident again.

Years later, I would make it a habit to prop open a side door during library board meetings. Cathy Greiner, a board member, asked me every time, “Aren’t you worried Dewey will run out?”

I looked down at Dewey, who was there as usual to attend the meeting, and he looked up at me. That look told me, as clearly as if he’d crossed his heart and hoped to die, that he wasn’t going to run. Why couldn’t everyone else see it?

“He’s not going anywhere,” I told her. “He’s committed to the library.”

And he was. For sixteen years, Dewey never went into the lobby again. He lounged by the front door, especially in the morning, but he never followed patrons out. If the doors opened and he heard trucks, he sprinted to the staff area. He didn’t want to be anywhere near a passing truck. Dewey was completely done with the outdoors.

Chapter 15

Spencer’s Favorite Cat