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

Only the brush and the bath, Dewey would have said if he was being honest. The older Dewey got, the more he hated being groomed.

He also didn’t have as much patience for preschool children, who tended to poke and pull at him. He was stiffening up, and he could no longer tolerate the small knocks and bruises. He never lashed out at children, and he rarely ran from them. He simply began to scoot away and hide when certain children came looking for him, avoiding a situation before it began.

Babies were a different story. One day I watched Dewey plop himself down a few feet from an infant girl who was on the floor in a baby carrier. I had often seen Dewey interact with infants, so I wasn’t apprehensive. But babies are delicate, and new moms even more so. Especially this one. Dewey just sat with a bored expression, looking off into the distance as if to say, Just happened to be walking by. Then, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he squirmed an inch closer. Just adjusting my position, his body language said, nothing to see here. A minute later, he did it again. Then again. Slowly, inch by inch, he crept closer, until finally he was pressed right up against the carrier. He popped his head over the edge, as if to confirm the child was inside, then settled down with his head on his paws. The infant reached her little hand over the edge and snatched his ear. Dewey adjusted his head so she could get a better grip. She laughed, kicking her legs and squeezing his ear. Dewey sat quietly, a contented look on his face.

We hired a new assistant children’s librarian, Donna Stanford, in 2002. Donna had been around the world as a Peace Corps recruiter, and she had recently returned to northwest Iowa to care for her mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Donna was quiet and conscientious, which I thought at first was the reason Dewey spent a few hours every day with her over in the children’s section. It took me a long time to realize that Donna didn’t know anyone in town besides her mother, and that even a place like Spencer—or maybe especially a close-knit place like Spencer—could seem cold and intimidating to an outsider. The only local resident who reached out to Donna was Dewey, who would ride on her shoulder while she rolled around in her office chair shelving books. When he tired of that, he would climb down onto her lap so Donna could pet him. Sometimes she read him children’s books. I caught them by surprise one day, Dewey resting with his eyes closed, Donna deep in thought. I could tell she was startled.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It is part of your job description to hold the kitty.”

Then there was Jodi’s boyfriend, Scott. Poor Scott was thrown right into the fire on his first trip to Spencer: my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. And this wasn’t just a family party. The event was held at the Spencer Convention Center, which had a seating capacity of 450 people. Even the convention center couldn’t contain the crowd. When the Jipson children descended on the stage to perform—in this case “You Are My Sunshine” with family-themed lyrics and Vince Gill’s “Look at Us,” complete with my brother Doug’s flat, off-key warbling—there were still more than a hundred people lined up outside, waiting to congratulate Mom and Dad. All their lives they had treated the whole world as their family; now the world had come to honor them.

As soon as she left home, my relationship with Jodi improved dramatically. We were great friends, we realized, and terrible roommates. But while we laughed about the present, we still didn’t talk about the past. Maybe mothers and daughters never do. That didn’t mean I couldn’t try.

“I know we’ve had some hard times, Jodi.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?”

Where should I start? My health. My absences. Her messy room. Brandy. “In Mankato. Remember? We would walk by a store and you’d say ‘I really want that shirt, Mommy, but I know we don’t have any money, so that’s okay.’ You didn’t want it, you needed it, but you never wanted me to feel bad.” I sighed. “You were only five years old.”

“Oh, Mom, that’s just life.”

And right then I realized that she was right. The good, the bad, that’s just life. Let it go. There’s no need to fret about the past. The question is: who are you going to share it with tomorrow?