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

I had Dewey cremated with one of his favorite toys, Marty Mouse, so he wouldn’t be alone. The crematorium offered a mahogany box and bronze plaque, no charge, but it didn’t seem right to display him. Dewey came back to his library in a plain plastic container inside a blue velvet bag. I put the container on a shelf in my office and went back to work.

A week after his memorial service, I came out of my office a half hour before the library opened, long before any patrons arrived, and told Kay, “It’s time.”

It was December, another brutally cold Iowa morning. Just like the first morning, and so many in between. It was close to the shortest day of the year, and the sun wasn’t yet up. The sky was still deep blue, almost purple, and there was no traffic on the roads. The only sound was the cold wind that had come all the way from the Canadian plains, whipping down the streets and out over the barren cornfields.

We moved some rocks in the little garden out front of the library, looking for a place where the ground wasn’t completely frozen. But the whole earth was frosted, and it took a while for Kay to dig the hole. The sun was peeking over the buildings on the far side of the parking lot, throwing the first shadows, by the time I placed the remains of my friend in the ground and said simply, “You’re always with us, Dewey. This is your home.” Then Kay dropped in the first shovelful of dirt, burying Dewey’s ashes forever outside the window of the children’s library, at the foot of the beautiful statue of a mother reading a book to her child. Mom’s statue. As Kay moved the stones back over Dewey’s final resting place, I looked up and saw the rest of the library staff in the window, silently watching us.

Epilogue

Last Thoughts from Iowa

Not much has changed in northwest Iowa since Dewey died. With ethanol being the next big thing, more corn is in the ground than ever before, but there aren’t more workers to grow it, just better technology and more machines. And, of course, more land.

In Spencer, the hospital added its first plastic surgeon. Cleber Meyer, now eighty, was voted out of office and went back to his gas station. The new mayor is the husband of Kim Petersen, the library secretary, but he’s no more a reader than Cleber was. The Eaton plant on the edge of town, which makes machine parts, moved a shift to Juárez, Mexico. One hundred and twenty jobs lost. But Spencer will survive. We always do.

The library rolls on, cat-free for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president. After Dewey’s death, we had almost a hundred offers for new cats. We had offers from as far away as Texas, transportation included. The cats were cute, and most had touching survival stories, but there was no enthusiasm to take one. The library board wisely put a two-year moratorium on cats in the library. They needed time, they said, to think through the issues. I had done all the thinking I needed. You can’t bring back the past.

But Dewey’s memory will live on, I feel confident of that. Maybe at the library, where his portrait hangs beside the front door above a bronze plaque that tells his story, a gift from one of Dewey’s many friends. Maybe in the children who knew him, who will talk about him in decades to come with their own children and grandchildren. Maybe in this book. After all, that’s why I’m writing it. For Dewey.

Back in 2000, when Grand Avenue made the National Registry, Spencer commissioned a public art installation to serve as both a statement about our values and an entry point to our historic downtown. Two Chicago-area ceramic tile mosaic artists, Nina Smoot-Cain and John Pitman Weber, spent a year in the area, talking with us, studying our history, and observing our way of life. More than 570 residents, from young children to grandparents, consulted with the artists. The result is a mosaic sculpture called The Gathering: Of Time, of Land, of Many Hands.

The Gathering is composed of four decorative pillars and three pictorial walls. The south wall is called “The Story of the Land.” It is a farm scene featuring corn and pigs; a woman hanging quilts on a clothesline; and a train. The north wall is “The Story of Outdoor Recreation.” It focuses on East and West Lynch parks, our main municipal recreation areas; the fairgrounds on the northwest edge of town; and the lakes. The west wall is “The Story of Spencer.” It shows three generations gathering at grandma’s house; the town battling the fire; and a woman making a pot, a metaphor for shaping the future. Just slightly to the left of center, in the upper half of the scene, is an orange cat sitting on the open pages of a book. The image is based on artwork submitted by a child.

The story of Spencer. Dewey is a part of it, then, now, and forever. He will live longest, I know, in the collective memory of a town that never forgets where it’s been, even as it looks ahead for where it’s going.