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

Dewey’s pickiness wasn’t just a matter of personality. He had a disease. No, really, it’s true. As far as digestive systems were concerned, that cat really got a lemon.

Dewey always hated being petted on the stomach. Stroke his back, scratch his ears, even pull his tail and poke him in the eye, but never pet his stomach. I didn’t think much of it until Dr. Esterly tried to clean his anal glands when he was about two years old. “I just push down on the glands and squeeze them clean,” he explained. “It will take thirty seconds.”

Sounded easy enough. I held Dewey while Dr. Esterly prepared his equipment, which consisted of a pair of gloves and a paper towel. “Nothing to it, Dewey,” I whispered. “It will be over before you know it.”

But as soon as Dr. Esterly pressed down, Dewey screamed. This wasn’t a mild complaint. This was a full-fledged, terrified cry that ripped out from the base of his stomach. His body bolted like it had been hit by lightning, and his legs scrambled frantically. Then he threw his mouth over my finger and bit down. Hard.

Dr. Esterly looked at my finger. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

I rubbed the sore. “It’s not a problem.”

“Yes, it is a problem. A cat shouldn’t bite like that.”

I wasn’t worried. That wasn’t Dewey. I knew Dewey; he wasn’t a biter. And I could still see the panic in the poor cat’s eyes. He wasn’t looking at anything. He was just staring. The pain had been blinding.

After that, Dewey hated Dr. Esterly. He even hated the thought of getting in the car because it might lead to Dr. Esterly. As soon as we pulled into the veterinary office’s parking lot, he started shaking. The smell of the lobby sent him into uncontrollable tremors. He would bury his head in the crook of my arm as if to say, Protect me.

As soon as he heard Dr. Esterly’s voice, Dewey growled. Many cats hate the veterinarian in his office but treat him as any other human in the outside world. Not Dewey. He feared Dr. Esterly unconditionally. If he heard his voice in the library, Dewey growled and sprinted to the other side of the room. If Dr. Esterly managed to sneak up on him and reached out to pet him, Dewey sprang up, looked around in panic, and bolted away. I think he recognized Dr. Esterly’s smell. That hand, to Dewey, was the hand of death. He had found his archenemy, and it happened to be one of the nicest men in town.

A few uneventful years went by after the anal gland incident, but Dewey eventually went back to prowling for rubber bands. As a kitten, his rubber band hunting had been halfhearted, and he was easily distracted. At about five years of age, Dewey became serious. I started finding the sticky remnants on the floor almost every morning. His litter box was filled not only with rubber worms but with the occasional drop of blood. Sometimes Dewey came tearing out of the back room like someone had lit a firecracker under his rear end.

Dr. Esterly diagnosed Dewey with constipation. Extreme constipation. “What kind of food does Dewey eat?”

I rolled my eyes. Dewey was well on his way to becoming the world’s worst eater. “He’s very picky. He has a remarkable sense of smell, so he can tell when the food is old or off in some way. Cat food isn’t the highest quality, you know. It’s just a bunch of leftover animal parts. So you can’t blame him.”

Dr. Esterly looked at me like a kindergarten teacher eyeing a parent who had just explained away her child’s disruptive behavior. Overindulgent, are we?

“He always eats canned food?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Does he drink much water?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“The cat avoids his water dish like poison.”

“More water,” Dr. Esterly assured me. “That should clear up the problem.”

Thanks, Doc, nothing to it. Except have you ever tried to get a cat to drink water against his will? It’s impossible.

I started with gentle coaxing. Dewey turned away in disgust.

I tried bribery. “No food until you drink some water. Don’t look at me like that. I can last longer than you can.” But I couldn’t. I always gave in.

I started petting Dewey as he ate. Slowly the petting turned to pushing. “If I force his head down into the water,” I thought, “he has to drink.” Needless to say, that plan didn’t work.

Maybe it was the water. We tried warm water. We tried cold water. We tried refreshing the water every five minutes. We tried different faucets. This was the mid-1990s, so there was no such thing as bottled water, at least not in Spencer, Iowa. We tried putting ice in the water dish. Everyone likes ice water, right? Actually, the ice worked. Dewey took a lick. But otherwise, nothing. How could an animal stay alive without water?

A few weeks later I rounded the corner into the staff bathroom and there was Dewey, on the toilet, his head completely buried in the bowl. All I could see was his rear end sticking straight up in the air. Toilet water! You sneaky son of a gun.

“Well,” I thought, “at least he isn’t going to die of dehydration.”