Dewey: the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World Read online

  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.”

  The door was left open when the staff bathroom was unoccupied, so that toilet was Dewey’s primary water source. But he also loved the women’s bathroom in the front of the library. Joy DeWall was the library clerk who spent the most time shelving books. Dewey would watch her loading books onto the book cart, then hop on for a ride once it was full. He would stare at the bookshelves as the cart rolled past, and whenever he saw something he liked, he’d signal Joy that he wanted to get off, like he was riding a little cat trolley. He knew she was a soft touch, so he always begged her to let him into that bathroom. Once inside the sanctum, he jumped on the sink and begged for the water to be turned on. He didn’t drink this water. He watched it. Something about the way it bounced off the drain plug fascinated him. He could watch that water for an hour, occasionally taking a quick slap at it with his paw.

  But that didn’t help his constipation, and neither did trips to his royal porcelain bowl. Whether he watched water or drank it, Dewey still couldn’t go. When it got really bad, Dewey tended to hide. One morning, poor Sharon Joy reached into the top drawer of the circulation desk for a tissue, but instead grabbed a handful of hair. She literally fell out of her chair.

  “How did he get in there?” she asked, staring down at Dewey’s back. His head and rear were completely buried in the drawer.

  Good question. The drawer hadn’t been opened all morning, so Dewey must have climbed in during the night. I poked around under the desk. Sure enough, there was a small opening behind the drawers. But this was the top drawer, more than three feet off the ground. Mr. Rubber Spine had wiggled his way to the top of the crevice and turned a tight corner, all to curl up in a space of no more than a few inches.

  I tried to rouse him, but Dewey shrugged me off and didn’t move. This wasn’t like him at all. Obviously something was wrong.

  As I suspected, Dewey was constipated. Extremely constipated. Again. This time, Dr. Esterly performed a thorough exam, with lots of deep poking and prodding of Dewey’s sensitive belly. Oh, it was painful to watch. This was definitely the end of the cat-doctor relationship.

  “Dewey has megacolon.”

  “You’re going to have to walk me through that, Doctor.”

  “Dewey’s colon is distended. This causes his intestinal contents to pool inside his body cavity.”

  Silence.

  “Dewey’s colon is permanently stretched out. This allows it to store more waste. By the time Dewy tries to get rid of it, the opening to the outside world is too small.”

  “A little extra water isn’t going to solve the problem, is it?”

  “I’m afraid there’s no cure. The condition is rare.” In fact, they weren’t even sure of the cause. Apparently, distended feline colons were not a top research priority.

  If Dewey had lived in the alley, his megacolon would have shortened his life. In a controlled environment like the library, I could expect periodic but severe bouts of constipation, accompanied by very picky eating. When the plumbing tends to back up, cats get awfully choosy about what they put in the system. See, I told you he had a disease.

  Dr. Esterly suggested an expensive cat food, the kind you could buy only from a veterinarian. I forget the name, maybe Laboratory Diet, Middle-aged Cat with Bowel Troubles Formula? The bill almost broke the budget. I hated to dish out thirty dollars for something I knew wasn’t going to work.

  I told Dr. Esterly, “Dewey’s a picky eater. He’s not going to like this.”

  “Put it in his bowl. Don’t give him anything else. He’ll eat it. No cat will starve itself to death.” As I was packing up to leave, he added, as much to himself as to me, “We’re going to have to watch Dewey carefully. There will be ten thousand unhappy people if something happens to him.”

  “There will be more people than that, Dr. Esterly. A lot more.”

  I put the fancy new food in the bowl. Dewey didn’t eat it. He sniffed it once and walked away.

  This food, it’s no good. I want the usual, please.

  The next day, he dropped the subtle approach. Instead of sniffing and walking away, he sat down by the food bowl and cried.

  Whhhyyyy? What have I done to deserve this?

  “Sorry, Dewey. Doctor’s orders.”

  After two days, he was weak, but he didn’t waver. He hadn’t even batted the food with his paw. That’s when I realized Dewey was stubborn. Painfully stubborn. He was a mellow cat. He was accommodating. But when it came to an important principle like food, Dewey would never roll over and play dog.

  And neither would I. Mom could be stubborn, too.

  So Dewey went behind my back to the rest of the staff. First he hit up Sharon by jumping on her desk and rubbing her arm. He had taken to sitting on Sharon’s desk and watching her eat lunch, and she seemed appreciative of a good meal.

  When that didn’t work, he tried his old friend Joy, always a soft touch. Then he tried Audrey, Cynthia, Paula, everybody, right down the line. He tried Kay, even though he knew she was the no-nonsense, practical type. Kay had no time for weakness. But I could see even she was beginning to waver. She tried to act tough, but she was developing a real warm spot in her heart for the Dew.

  I didn’t care, let them disapprove. I was going to win this round. It might break my heart now, but in the end Dewey would thank me. And besides, I was Mommy, and I said so!

  On the fourth day, even the patrons turned on me. “Just feed him, Vicki! He’s so hungry.” Dewey had been shamelessly putting on a starving cat act for his fans, and it had clearly been working.

  Finally, on the fifth day, I caved and gave Dewey his favorite can of Fancy Feast. He gobbled it down without even coming up for air. That’s it, he said, licking his lips and then stepping to the corner for a long tongue bath of his face and ears. We all feel better now, don’t we?

  That night I went
out and bought him an armful of cans. I couldn’t fight anymore. “Better a constipated cat,” I thought, “than a dead one.”

  For two months Dewey was happy. I was happy. All was right with the world.

  Then Dewey decided he didn’t like Fancy Feast, chunky chicken flavor. He wasn’t going to eat another bite of it. He wanted something new, and make it snappy, thank you very much. I bought a new flavor, something in the moist smelly blob category. Dewey took one sniff and walked away. Nope, not that one, either.

  “You’ll eat it, young man, or no dessert for you.”

  At the end of the day, the food was still there, dried out and crusty. What was I supposed to do? The cat was sick! It took five tries, but I found a flavor he liked. It only lasted a few weeks. Then he wanted something new. Oh, brother. I hadn’t just ceded the battlefield; I’d completely lost the war.

  By 1997 the situation was completely absurd. How could you not laugh at an entire bookshelf full of cans of cat food? I’m not exaggerating. We kept Dewey’s items on two shelves in the staff area, and one of them was only for food. We had at least five flavors on hand at all times. The Dew had Midwestern taste. His favorite flavors were beef, chunky chicken, beef & liver, and turkey, but you never knew when another flavor would strike his fancy. He hated seafood, but he fell in love with shrimp. For a week. Then he wouldn’t touch it.

  Unfortunately Dewey was still constipated, so on Dr. Esterly’s orders I copied a page out of a calendar and hung it on the wall. Every time someone found a present in Dewey’s litter box, they marked the date. The calendar was known throughout the office as Dewey’s Poop Chart.

  I can only imagine what someone like Sharon thought. She was very funny, and she loved Dewey, but she was also fastidious. Now we were discussing poop on a regular basis. She must have thought I was nuts. But she marked that chart, and she never complained. Of course, Dewey only pooped a couple times a week, so we weren’t exactly wearing down the nibs of our pens.

  When Dewey hadn’t gone for three days, we locked him in the back closet for a romantic date with his litter. Dewey hated being locked anywhere, especially a closet. I hated it almost as much as Dewey, especially in the winter because the closet was unheated.

  “It’s for your own good, Dew.”

  After a half hour, I let him out. If no evidence turned up in the litter box, I gave him an hour to roam and then locked him in for another half hour. No poop, back in the box. Three times was the limit. After three times, he wasn’t holding out, he really couldn’t go.

  This strategy completely backfired. Dewey soon became so pampered he refused to use the bathroom unless someone took him to the box. He stopped going completely at night, which meant first thing in the morning I had to carry him—yes, carry him—to his litter. Talk about being the king!

  I know, I know. I was a sucker. A spoiler of cats. But what could I do? I knew how bad Dewey felt. Not just because I had a connection with him, but because I was no stranger to lifelong illness. I’d been in and out of the hospital more times than most doctors. I’d been medevaced to Sioux Falls twice. And I had been through the Mayo Clinic for irritable bowel syndrome, hyperthyroidism, severe migraines, and Graves’ disease, among others. At one point I had hives on my legs for two years. It turned out I was allergic to the prayer kneeler at church. A year later I suddenly froze. I couldn’t move for half an hour. The staff had to carry me to a car, drive me home, and lay me out in bed. It happened again at a wedding. I had a forkful of wedding cake halfway to my mouth and I couldn’t put my arm down. I couldn’t even move my tongue to tell anyone. Thank God my friend Faith was there. The cause turned out to be a sudden, severe drop in blood pressure exacerbated by one of my medications.

  But worst, by far, were the lumps in my breasts. Even now, I don’t feel entirely comfortable talking about it. I’ve shared this experience with very few people, and it’s difficult to break that silence. I don’t want anyone to look at me as less than a complete woman or, even worse, some kind of fraud.

  Of all the things in my life—the alcoholic husband, the welfare, the surprise hysterectomy—my double mastectomy was by far the hardest. The worst part wasn’t the procedure, although it was probably the most physically painful thing I’ve ever endured. The worst part was the decision. I agonized over it for more than a year. I traveled to Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and Omaha, more than three hours away, to consult physicians, but I couldn’t make up my mind.

  Mom and Dad encouraged me to have the procedure. They said, “You have to do it. You have to get healthy. Your life is at stake.”

  I talked to my friends, who had helped me through the end of my marriage and so many problems since, but for the first time they didn’t talk back. They couldn’t deal with it, they admitted later. Breast cancer hit too close to the bone.

  I needed to have the surgery. I knew that. If I didn’t, it was only a matter of time before I heard the word cancer. But I was a single woman. I dated fairly regularly, if not particularly successfully. My friend Bonnie and I still laugh about the Cowboy, whom I met at a dance in West Okoboji. We met up in Sioux City, and he took me to one of those country places with sawdust on the floor. I can’t tell you about the food because a fight broke out, someone pulled a knife, and I spent twenty minutes huddled in the women’s bathroom. The Cowboy graciously took me back to his house and showed me—I kid you not—how to make bullets. On the way back, he drove me through the stockyards. He found it romantic to see the holding pens in the moonlight.

  And yet despite the flops, I still hoped for the right man. I didn’t want that hope to die. But who could love me without my breasts? It wasn’t losing my sexuality I was worried about. It was losing my femininity, my identity as a woman, my self-image. My parents didn’t understand; my friends were too scared to help. What could I do?

  One morning there was a knock on my office door. It was a woman I had never met. She came in, closed the door, and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m a patient of Dr. Kolegraff’s. He sent me to see you. Five years ago, I had a double mastectomy.”

  We talked for two hours. I don’t remember her name, and I haven’t seen her since (she wasn’t from Spencer), but I remember every word. We talked about everything—the pain, the procedure, the recovery, but mostly the emotions. Did she still feel like a woman? Was she still herself? What did she see when she looked in the mirror?

  When she left, I not only knew the right decision, I was ready to make it.

  The double mastectomy was a multistep process. First, they took my breasts. Then they installed temporary implants called expanders. I had ports under my arms—literally tubes that stuck out from my flesh—and every two weeks I received a saline injection to expand the size of my chest and stretch the skin. Unfortunately the dangers of silicone implants exploded into the news during my first weeks of recovery, and the FDA placed a temporary ban on new implants. I ended up keeping my four-week temporary expanders for eight months. I had so much scar tissue under my armpits that I got shooting pains down my sides whenever the barometric pressure changed. For years, Joy asked me every time she saw a dark cloud, “Vicki, is it going to rain?”

  “Yes,” I’d say, “but not for another thirty minutes.” I could tell when the rain was coming to within ten minutes just by the level of pain. Once it reached crippling, the rain was almost here. Joy and I would laugh, because I was almost always right, but I really just wanted to sit down, right where I was, and cry.

  Nobody knew my pain: not my parents, my friends, or my staff. The doctor dug inside my body and scraped out every ounce of flesh he could find. That hollow, sore, scraped-out feeling was always with me, every minute, but sometimes the pain would wash over me so suddenly and so savagely that I would drop to the floor. I was out of the library, on and off, for most of a year. Many of the days I struggled to my desk I knew I shouldn’t have been there at all. With Kay in charge, the library could run without me, but I wasn’t sure I could run without it. The routine. The comp
any. The feeling of accomplishment. And most of all, Dewey.

  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.