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

Whenever I had needed him in the past, Dewey had always been by my side. He had perched on my computer when I thought life might overwhelm me, and he had sat beside me on the sofa and waited for Jodi to spend time with us. Now he moved from sitting beside me to climbing up, one paw at a time, and sitting on my lap. He stopped walking beside me and started insisting on climbing into my arms. That might seem like a small thing, but it made all the difference to me because, you see, I didn’t have anybody to touch. There was a distance between me and the world, and there was no one to hug me, to tell me it was going to be okay. It wasn’t just the surgery. For two years, while I agonized over my decision, mourned my loss, and endured the physical pain, Dewey touched me every day. He sat on me. He snuggled in my arms. And when it was over, when I was finally back to something resembling my normal self, he went right back to sitting at my side. Nobody understood what I was going through for those two years; nobody, that is, but Dewey. He seemed to understand that love was constant, but that it could be raised to a higher level when it really mattered.

Every morning since his first week in the library, Dewey had waited for me at the front door. He would stare at me as I approached, then turn and run for his food bowl when I opened the door. Then, on one of the worst mornings of that terrible two years, he started waving. Yes, waving. I stopped and looked at him. He stopped and looked at me, then started waving again.

It happened the next morning, too. And the next. And the next, until finally I understood this was our new routine. For the rest of his life, as soon as Dewey saw my car pull into the parking lot, he started scratching his right paw on the front door. The wave continued as I crossed the street and approached the door. It wasn’t frantic. He wasn’t meowing or pacing. He was sitting very still and waving at me, as if welcoming me to the library and, at the same time, reminding me he was there. As if I could ever forget. Every morning, Dewey waving at me as I walked toward the library made me feel better: about the job, about life, about myself. If Dewey was waving, everything was all right.

“Good morning, Dewey,” I would say, my heart singing and the library bursting with life, even on the darkest and coldest mornings. I would look down at him and smile. He would rub against my ankle. My buddy. My boy. Then I would cradle him in my arms and carry him to his litter box. How could I deny him that?

Chapter 20

Dewey’s New Friends

On the afternoon of June 7, 1999, I received a phone call from a Dewey fan. “Vicki, turn on the radio. You’re not going to believe this.”

I turned it on to hear “and now you know . . . the rest of the story.”

Anyone raised on radio knows that sign-off. Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story is one of the most popular programs in the history of radio. Each broadcast relates a minor but telling incident in the life of a well-known person. The gimmick is that you don’t know whom Paul Harvey is talking about until his famous closing.

“And that little boy,” he might say, “the one who so wanted to cut down that cherry tree, grew up to be none other than George Washington, the father of our country. And now you know . . . the rest of the story.”

Now Paul Harvey was telling the story of a cat who inspired a town and became famous around the world . . . and it all started in a library book drop on a cold January morning in a small Iowa town. And now you know . . .

Who cares if nobody from Paul Harvey’s staff called to check the facts? Who cares if they didn’t know 10 percent of the rest of the story, the part that made Dewey so special? I sat down at the end of the broadcast and thought, “That’s it. Dewey’s really made it now.” And then, because I was so used to the unexpected with Dewey, I wondered what was going to happen next.

For years I had gone to the newspaper and the radio station to pass on Dewey news. With Paul Harvey, I decided to hold back. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of Dewey fans. Patrons asked every day for the latest bit of Dewey news. Children ran into the library, eager and smiling, looking for their friend. But good news about Dewey no longer seemed to impress the rest of the town. In fact, I was beginning to worry it was pushing some people away. Dewey, I suspected, might be a little overexposed.

But only in Spencer. The rest of the world still couldn’t get enough. In addition to being on several state boards, I was one of six continuing-education instructors in the Iowa library system. I taught the courses using the Iowa Communication Network (ICN), a teleconferencing system connecting libraries, military depots, hospitals, and schools around the state. Every time I sat down in our ICN room to teach the opening class of a course, the first question was, “Where’s Dewey?”

“Yes,” another librarian would pipe up, “can we see him?”