Soon after, I watched him slowly wind his way into a half-empty tissue box. He put his two front feet through the slit on top, then delicately stepped in with the other two. Slowly he sat down on his hind legs and rolled his back end until it was wedged into the box. Then he started bending his front legs and working the front of his body into the crease. The operation took four or five minutes, but finally there was nothing left but his head sticking out in one direction and his tail sticking out in the other. I watched as he stared half-lidded into the distance, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.
In those days, Iowa provided envelopes with its tax forms, and we always put a box of them out for patrons. Dewey must have spent half his first winter curled up in that box. “I need one envelope,” a patron would say nervously, “but I don’t want to disturb Dewey. What should I do?”
“Don’t worry. He’s asleep.”
“But won’t it wake him up? He’s lying on top of them.”
“Oh, no, Dew’s dead to the world.”
The patron gently rolled Dewey to the side and then, far more carefully than necessary, slid out an envelope. He could have jerked it like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under a dinner setting, it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Cat hair comes with the envelope, no charge.”
Dewey’s other favorite resting spot was the back of the copier. “Don’t worry,” I told the confused patrons, “you can’t disturb him. He sleeps there because it’s warm. The more copies you make, the more heat the machine produces, the happier he’ll be.”
If the patrons weren’t quite sure what to do with Dewey yet, the staff had no such hesitation. One of my first decisions was that no library funds, not one penny, would ever be spent on Dewey’s care. Instead, we kept a Dewey Box in the back room. Everyone on staff tossed in their loose change. Most of us also brought in soda cans from home. Recycling soda cans was all the rage, and one of the clerks, Cynthia Behrends, would take the cans to a drop-off point every week. The whole staff was “feeding the kitty” to feed the kitty.
In return for these small contributions, we’d get endless hours of pleasure. Dewey loved drawers, and he developed a habit of popping out of them when you least expected. If you were shelving books, he’d jump onto the cart and demand a trip around the library. And when Kim Peterson, the library secretary, started typing, you knew a show was about to begin. As soon as I heard those keys, I’d put down my work and wait for the signal.
“Dewey’s after the clacker thingies again!” Kim would call out.
I’d hurry out of my office to find Dewey hunched on the back edge of Kim’s big white typewriter. His head would be jerking from side to side as the disk moved left to right, then back again, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at the clacker thing-ies, which were nothing more than the keys rising up to strike the paper. The whole staff would be there, watching and laughing. Dewey’s antics always drew a crowd.
This was important. Everyone at the library was well-intentioned, but over the years the staff had become splintered and cliquish. Only Doris Armstrong, who was older and possibly wiser than the rest of us, had managed to stay friends with everyone. She had a large desk in the middle of the staff area where she covered each new book with a plastic protective sleeve, and her humor and good cheer held us together. She was also our biggest cat lover, and soon her desk was one of Dewey’s favorite spots. He would sprawl there in the late morning, batting at her big sheets of plastic, the new center of attention and the mutual friend of everyone on staff. Here, finally, was something we could share. Just as important, he was a friend to all our children (or in Doris’s case, grandchildren), too. Nothing concrete happened—no one apologized or discussed their issues, for instance—but once Dewey arrived the tension began to lift. We were laughing; we were happier; Dewey had brought us together.
But no matter how much fun Dewey was having, he never forgot his routine. At exactly ten thirty, he would hop up and head for the staff room. Jean Hollis Clark ate yogurt on her break, and if he hung around long enough she’d let him lick the lid. Jean was quiet and hardworking, but she always found ways to accommodate Dewey. If Dewey wanted downtime, he would lie limply over Jean’s left shoulder—and only her left shoulder, never her right—while she filed papers. After a few months, Dewey wouldn’t let us hold him cradled in our arms anymore (too much like a baby, I suppose) so the whole staff adopted Jean’s over the shoulder technique. We called it the Dewey Carry.
Dewey helped me with downtime, too, which was nice since I had a tendency to work too hard. Many days I’d be hunched over my desk for hours, so intent on budget numbers or progress reports that I wouldn’t even realize Dewey was there until he sprang into my lap.
“How you doing, baby boy?” I’d say with a smile. “So nice to see you.” I’d pet him a few times before turning back to my work. Unsatisfied, he’d climb on my desk and start sniffing. “Oh, you just happened to sit on the paper I’m working on, didn’t you? Purely a coincidence.”
I put him on the floor. He hopped back up. “Not now, Dewey. I’m busy.” I put him back down. He hopped back up. Maybe if I ignored him.
He pushed his head against my pencil. I pushed him aside. Fine, he thought, I’ll knock these pens to the ground. Which he proceeded to do, one pen at a time, watching each one fall. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, Dewey, you win.” I wadded up a piece of paper and threw it to him. He ran after it, sniffed it, then came back. Typical cat. Always one to play, never one to fetch. I walked over, picked up the paper, tossed it a few more times. “What am I going to do with you?”
But it wasn’t all jokes and games. I was the boss, and I had responsibilities—like giving the cat a bath. The first time I bathed Dewey, I was confident things would go well. He loved the bath that first morning, right? This time, Dewey slid into the sink like a block of ice dropped . . . into a vat of acid. He thrashed. He screamed. He put his feet on the edge of the sink and tried to throw his body over the side. I held him down with both arms. Twenty minutes later, I was covered with water. My hair looked like I had stuck my tongue in a light socket. Everybody laughed, including, eventually, me.
The third bath was just as bad. I managed to get Dewey scrubbed, but I didn’t have the patience for toweling and blow-drying. Not this crazy kitten.
“Fine,” I told him. “If you hate it that much, just go.”
Dewey was a vain cat. He would spend an hour washing his face until he got it just right. The funniest part was the way he would ball up his fist, lick it, and shove it into his ears. He would work those ears until they were sparkling white. Now, soaking wet, he looked like a Chihuahua crushed by a wave of toupees. It was pathetic. The staff was laughing and taking pictures, but Dewey looked so genuinely upset that after a few minutes the pictures stopped.
“Have a sense of humor, Dew,” I teased him. “You brought this on yourself.” He curled up behind a shelf of books and didn’t come out for hours. After that, Dewey and I agreed that two baths a year were plenty.
“The bath is nothing,” I told Dewey a few months into his stay at the library, wrapping him up in his green towel. “You’re not going to like this at all.” Dewey never rode in a cage; it was too much like that night in the box. Whenever I took him out of the library, I just wrapped him up in his green towel.