Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE - Dewey and Tobi
TWO - Mr. Sir Bob Kittens (aka Ninja, aka Mr. Pumpkin Pants)
THREE - Spooky
FOUR - Tabitha, Boogie, Gail, BJ, Chimilee, Kit, Miss Gray, Maira, Midnight, ...
FIVE - Christmas Cat
SIX - Cookie
SEVEN - Marshmallow
EIGHT - Church Cat
NINE - Dewey and Rusty
Acknowledgements
Animals in Need
ALSO BY VICKI MYRON WITH BRET WITTER
Dewey
Books for Children
Dewey: There’s a Cat in the Library!
Dewey’s Christmas in the Library
Dewey the Library Cat
DUTTON
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Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, October 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Vicki Myron LLC
All rights reserved
Photo credits:
Pages iii, 1, 43, 246, 301: courtesy the author; Page 17: Shutterstock; Pages 44, 68: Barbara Lajiness;
Pages 69, 100: William A. Bezanson; Pages 101, 125: Mary Nan and Larry W. Evans; Page 126: Vicki
Klueverj; Pages 165, 195: Lynda Caira; Page 196: Kristie L. Dvent; Page 223: Carol R. Riggs.
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To Glenn,
for his amazing love and support
PROLOGUE
Dewey
“Thank you, Vicki, and thank you, Dewey. . . . I don’t believe in angels, but Dewey comes close.”
—Christine B., Tampa, FL
I disagree with the person who wrote that letter, because I do believe there are angels walking among us, helping us grow. believe in “teachable moments,” when we can learn something valuable about life if our eyes and hearts are open to the world around us. These angels of opportunity, as I like to think of them, come in all forms. They appear thanks to the important people in our lives, but also through chance meetings and strangers. I believe Dewey Readmore Books, the famous library cat of Spencer, Iowa, was one of those angels. He taught so many lessons, and touched so many lives, that I can’t dismiss it as chance. And I don’t believe in coincidence.
But I know what that young woman is saying. She is saying that Dewey, through his actions and his example, transformed her life. She can’t find the words to describe that power, but she knows it is special.
Well, I have a phrase for it: Dewey’s Magic. It is the phrase I used each time I saw his ability to change the way people thought about themselves. No one saw that Magic more than I, because of all the people in the world, I knew Dewey best and was touched by him most. I’m just an ordinary Iowa girl, the long-serving director of a small-town library less than a dozen miles from the farm where I was born and raised, but for nineteen years I was privileged to share my journey with Dewey. And Dewey . . . he was special. He impacted lives. He inspired a town. He became famous around the world, headlined magazines and newspapers, and was the subject of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Dewey, which as “Dewey’s Mommy” I was privileged to write. Dewey’s Magic, that’s what it was. He was just a cat, but he had a way of inspiring our better selves. He made everyone fall in love with him. He touched the world. No one who met him ever forgot Dewey Readmore Books.
His story began quietly, on a brutally cold weekend in January 1988. The temperature was minus fifteen degrees, the kind of cold that burns your lungs and peels the skin from your face (or at least it feels that way). That kind of cold, often accompanied by ferocious winds, is the worst thing about living in the great northern plains. You learn to tolerate it, but you never adapt. There are times in northern Iowa when it just isn’t wise to go outside.
But despite the deep freeze, someone had been out in downtown Spencer, because at some point that Sunday, a tiny homeless kitten was shoved into the book return slot on the back wall of the Spencer Public Library. I hope it was an act of mercy, that someone saw a tiny eight-week-old, one-pound kitten shivering in the snow and wanted to protect it. If that was the case, they were misguided. The library book return was nothing more than a metal tube that led, after a four-foot drop, into a sealed metal box. In effect, it was a refrigerator. There were no blankets, pads, or soft linings. There was only cold metal. And books. For at least ten hours and maybe as long as twenty-four, little Dewey sat in bitterly cold utter darkness, with nothing to comfort him but books.