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

Gary Roma was traveling the country, from the East Coast to North Dakota, to create a documentary about library cats. He arrived expecting the kind of footage he’d shot at other libraries: cats darting apprehensively behind bookshelves, walking away, sleeping, and doing everything possible to avoid looking into the camera. Dewey was exactly the opposite. He didn’t ham it up, but he went about all his usual activities, and he performed them on command. Gary arrived early in the morning to catch Dewey waiting for me at the front door. He shot Dewey sitting by the sensor posts greeting patrons; lying in his Buddha pose; playing with his favorite toys, Marty Mouse and the red yarn; sitting on a patron’s shoulder in the Dewey Carry; and sleeping in a box.

Gary said, “This is the best footage I’ve shot so far. If you don’t mind, I’ll come back after lunch.”

After lunch I sat down for an interview. After a few introductory questions, Gary asked, “What is the meaning of Dewey?”

I told him, “Dewey’s great for the library. He relieves stress. He makes it feel like home. People love him, especially children.”

“Yes, but what’s the deeper meaning?”

“There is no deeper meaning. Everyone enjoys spending time with Dewey. He makes us happy. He’s one of us. What more to life is there than that?”

He kept pressing for meaning, meaning, meaning. Gary’s first film was Off the Floor & Off the Wall: A Doorstop Documentary, and I could imagine him pressing all his subjects: “What does your doorstop mean to you?”

“It keeps the door from hitting the wall.”

“Yes, but what about the deeper meaning?”

“Well, I can use it to hold the door open.”

“Go deeper.”

“Umm, it keeps the room drafty?”

Gary must have gotten deeper meaning out of doorstops because one review mentions linguists dissecting the etymology of the word and philosophers musing about a world without doors.

About six months after filming, in the winter of 1997, we threw a party for the inaugural showing of Puss in Books. The library was packed. The film started with a distant shot of Dewey sitting on the floor of the Spencer library waving his tail slowly back and forth. As the camera zoomed in and followed him under a table, across some shelves, and finally to his favorite cart for a ride, you heard my voice in the background: “We arrived at work one morning, and we went back to open the book drop and empty the books out, and there inside was this tiny little kitten. He was buried under tons of books, the book drop was just full of books. People will come in, and they’ll hear the story of how we acquired Dewey, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you poor little thing. You were thrown into that book drop on that day.’ And I’ll say, ‘Poor little thing, my foot. That was the luckiest day of that boy’s life, because he’s king around here, and he knows it.’”

As the last words rolled out, Dewey stared right into the camera, and boy, could you tell I was right. He really was the king.

By this time, I was used to strange calls about Dewey. The library was getting a couple requests a week for interviews, and articles about our famous cat were turning up in our mail on an almost weekly basis. Dewey’s official photograph, the one taken by Rick Krebsbach just after Jodi left Spencer, had appeared in magazines, newsletters, books, and newspapers from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Jerusalem, Israel. It even appeared in a cat calendar; Dewey was Mr. January. But even I was surprised to receive a phone call from the Iowa office of a national pet food company.

“We’ve been watching Dewey,” they said, “and we’re impressed.” Who wouldn’t be? “He seems like an extraordinary cat. And obviously people love him.” You don’t say! “We’d like to use him in a print advertising campaign. We can’t offer money, but we will provide free cat food for life.”

I have to admit, I was tempted. Dewey was a finicky eater, and we were indulgent parents. We were throwing out dishes full of food every day just because he didn’t like the smell, and we were donating a hundred cans of out-of-favor cat food a year. Since the Feed the Kitty campaign of loose change and soda cans didn’t cover the costs and I had vowed to never use a penny of city funds for Dewey’s care, most of that money was coming out of my pocket. I was personally subsidizing the feeding of a good portion of the cats in Spencer.

“I’ll talk to the library board.”

“We’ll send over samples.”

By the time the next library board meeting rolled around, the decision had already been made. Not by me or the board, but by Dewey himself. Mr. Finicky completely rejected the free samples.

Are you kidding me? he told me with a disdainful sniff. I can’t shill for this junk.

“I’m sorry,” I told the manufacturer. “Dewey only eats Fancy Feast.”

Chapter 19

The World’s Worst Eater