Dewey's Nine Lives: The Legacy of the Small-Town Library Cat Who Inspired Millions

by Vicki Myron

  “It was hard work,” Mary Nan admitted, which made Larry laugh. After all, he was the one who cleaned the litter and served the food. He was the one who got up in the middle of the night when the darn cats wouldn’t stop banging on the kitchen cabinet where their food was stored. He was the one who took them to the vet when they needed it and built the special cage for BJ, who got himself sliced in a fight. The vet gave him some medicine and a patch called New-Skin to cover the wound. BJ didn’t have a tooth in his head—“he had a mouth like a rock crusher,” as Larry put it—but he always managed to get into tussles and knock the patch off. Mr. Bandage, Carl the groundskeeper called him, because for six months the New Skin was hanging half off his leg or lying in the grass somewhere. So Larry built a special cage, and BJ was quarantined until his leg healed. Then, with that problem solved, Larry fixed the condo screens the cats had torn. And repaired their cat house. And mended the shredded curtains. And shooed cats away from the fountain in the courtyard, where they were always trying to drink.

  One day, Mary Nan passed a ladder and saw two cats sitting on each rung. Larry needs to put this stuff away, she thought. A few evenings later, Larry opened his barbeque grill to light it and found a cat inside. He picked up a huge piece of driftwood from the beach so they could sharpen their claws. That’ll keep them busy, he thought. Within a few years, it was nothing but a nub, and they still had a four-inch patch on each corner of their sofa where the cats had scratched down to the frame. Larry got the vacuum out every night to suck up the shards of driftwood and cloth.

  When they overran the food bowls outside the bungalow, Larry decided to scatter more bowls around the property. Every morning, while Mary Nan fixed breakfast, Larry drove around on his golf cart to the various food bowls. There would be cats lounging in the back and cats clinging to the sides of the cart, trying to open the food bags. He worried at first, but after a while he just whizzed around the property with cats occasionally tumbling off and rolling to their feet in the grass. The feeding trip took most of an hour, and when he finally arrived home and sat down for breakfast, he’d look out the window and see five or six cat staring at his toast and jam.

  “They’re hungry again,” he’d mutter to Mary Nan between mouthfuls of the healthy oatmeal she forced on him though he much preferred bacon and eggs.

  And they’d laugh. There was never a moment, after all, when a cat wasn’t hungry. They’d follow Larry on his golf cart runs around the property, whining for food. They followed Mary Nan to her car, and she’d have to back out very slowly to keep from running them down. They’d follow her into the office and trail her in a long line as she went around the sidewalks picking up lizard tails, because when geckos get scared, they lose their tails, and the poor lizards at the Colony Resort lived in constant fear of the cats.

  The only time you wouldn’t see cats at the Colony Resort was after the bombing run. In those days, Sanibel Island used old military bombers to spray for mosquitoes. They’d fly just above the tree-tops and drop poisonous spray over every inch of the island. One second, it was silence and clear blue skies; the next, an old airplane would appear with an earth-shaking drone. The cats would jump up and bolt away in a panic. It was a shame to see them so terrified, but Mary Nan had to admit it was amusing to see twenty cats scatter in every direction like a double set of bowling pins.

  One day, Mary Nan ran into Carl the groundskeeper at one of the bungalows in the far corner of the property. He was casually raking the lawn, like nothing unusual was going on, but there was a cat hanging off each of his pant legs.

  “They’re trying to get my treats,” Carl told Mary Nan. He had taken to keeping cat treats in his pockets, and apparently it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to have cats hanging off his hips, trying to steal a bite or two.

  “It wasn’t just time consuming,” Larry laughed. “It was expensive.” But Larry and Mary Nan didn’t want it any other way. Between the cats, the staff, and the resort guests, their childless union was bursting with companionship and love.

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF LARRY

  7:30 Wake up. Shove forty pounds of cat off bed. Trudge into kitchen to open bottom cabinet, where cat food is kept. As usual, trapped cat comes waltzing out, licking its lips.

  7:40 Start golf cart for morning round . . . of feeding cats. Visit “nine hole course” of bowls scattered around resort. Try not to send hitchhiking cats flying off cart around corners.

  8:30 Breakfast of oatmeal instead of eggs. Darn Mary Nan’s health fads.

  9:00 Workday officially starts. Cats rush out when workshop door opened since they sleep in the shop when the temperature drops below forty degrees. They think that’s brutally cold. Reason #103 why Sanibel Island is the best! Buffy asleep in toolbox again.

  9:18 Check overnight work orders in office. Kiss Mary Nan at front desk. No cats allowed, but Gail has snuck in as usual.

  9:32 Inspect torn screen cited in work order. Notice cat claws stuck in mesh.

  9:45 Open garage to retrieve new screen material. No cats! Whoops, there was one asleep on the ladder.

  11:18 Finish installing screen. Notice young boy and cat watching. Both look disappointed.

  11:38 Check chemical level in pool. Notice a cat drinking out of the shallow end. Then notice it isn’t a cat. It’s a raccoon. It stops to sample cat food before waddling off.

  12:02 Lunch with Mary Nan in the office. Gail watches, but no handouts.

  12:32 Shoo cats out from under the car, walk around twice to make sure they have all left, then back up very slowly and proceed to town to pick up mail.

  1:13 Take golf cart around resort to inspect grounds. Cats are sleeping in pile on the rack. How many? Maybe four, but too tightly packed to be sure. Cats along route look up briefly, then fall back to sleep. They know this isn’t the food run.

  1:40 Prune trees with Carl the groundskeeper. Cats crowd around to watch. Cat starts gagging, then throws up a lizard tail. Clean up lizard tail.

  5:00 Workday officially ends, but tree branches still need to be hauled away.

  5:35 Evening meal run. Gail in the back of the golf cart, munching food from the bag.

  6:23 Walk to beach with Mary Nan. Pretend cats aren’t following.

  7:28 Late dinner. Cats staring in window, begging for food. Where are the curtains?

  7:31 Rehang rod that collapsed when cats tried to climb curtains. Pretend there are still eight scratches in the fabric, like yesterday, not thirteen.

  7:42 Back to dinner and big staring cat eyes. Oh, what the heck, throw them a few handfuls of food.

  8:15 Inspection of bungalow for minor cat damage. Nothing but shards of driftwood. Find three cats, as usual, crammed in the little space between the headboard and the mattress of the bed.

  9:00 Kick Maira and Chimi out of the big lounge chair. Watch some TV.

  9:36 Almost tell Chimi not to sharpen his claws on the sofa, then remember that both front corners of the sofa have four-inch-square patches where cats have shredded them down to the wooden frame. Decide to sip soda instead. Wish it was soda. It’s water. Darn health fads.

  11:30 End of local news. Time for bed. Settle onto mattress in typical cat, Mary Nan, cat, cat, Larry, cat order.

  11:35 Turn off light, reposition cats three times, find comfortable position, and go to sleep.

  12:34 Wake up to bang, bang, bang from the kitchen. Cats are trying to open the cabinet again. Realize this will go on for fifteen minutes until they finally succeed. Contemplate getting up but decide instead to just let the darn cat out, no doubt licking its lips, first thing in the morning. Fall back asleep with a smile.

  One evening, no doubt while Mary Nan and Larry were being eye-balled in their scratched-up chairs by several lethargic cats, there was a knock at the bungalow door. Standing outside was a small boy, about eleven years old, whose family had been coming to the resort for several years. In his arms was a beautiful tan kitten.

  “Can I have this cat?” the little boy asked, with
big pleading eyes. “I love this cat.”

  Mary Nan was hesitant. She knew the family and liked them, but she didn’t have any idea how well they would care for a cat. And, truth be told, she wasn’t sure where that little tan cat had come from. Had she even seen it before? Was it really hers to give? Apparently, it had been staying in the family’s rented condo, against resort regulations, so Mary Nan figured the cat was a regular resort resident. And since the parents were as enthusiastic to adopt it as the boy, and since the tan kitten really seemed to have taken to the family, she agreed to let it return with them to north Florida.

  For several weeks, she was nervous. What had she done? What might have befallen that poor cat? What did she think she was, an adoption agency? Then, just as she was beginning to drive herself crazy, she received a thank-you note with a snapshot of the kitten. Every few months, the family sent her another photograph of the cat in his new home, surrounded by love and lapping up the attention like a forgotten glass of milk left sitting on the kitchen table. Every year, when the family returned to the Colony Resort, they shared more pictures and stories of the cat that had, truly, become a member of their family.

  A frequent visitor from Miami was more direct. Connie simply told Mary Nan, “I’m taking these two cats.” She already had five cats at home, but she couldn’t leave without the two friends she’d made over a series of visits. As long as the cats are happy, Mary Nan thought, as ten other cats watched her from the rungs of a ladder. Larry, it seemed, was always leaving that ladder around.

  It wasn’t as if Mary Nan didn’t know these people. The Colony was a family-oriented resort, and most of the renters had been coming for years. Some were second generation, following the path of their parents; some viewed the visit as an opportunity to bring together three or even four generations under the Sanibel sun. A vast majority had a standing reservation and came for the same week or two every year, and by the second or third visit, most came expecting cats. They asked about the cats when confirming reservations, and their ridiculous antics—falling off the towel bin while wrestling, taking naps in beach bags, snacking on lizard tails—were the talk of the poolside lounge chairs. The children, especially, loved chasing, feeding, hugging, and petting the most pampered crowd of feral kittens north of Ernest Hemingway’s twelve-toed heirs in Key West. (He’d promised all his cats’ descendants permanent residence at his house in his will, and they’d taken to inbreeding like mad.) Every visitor to the Colony, it seemed, had a favorite cat or two.

  But no matter how many cats found homes, or how many guests spoke fondly of different kittens, the star of the resort was always Gail, the lone female in Boogie’s original litter. Gail was pure white, with soft fluffy fur and an endearing pink nose. In the sunlight, she absolutely shone. Nobody could miss seeing her amid the swirl of fur; everyone felt compelled to comment on her unique beauty and regal bearing. And like Dewey, she had a warm, calm, generous personality to match that outward charm.

  One regular guest, Dr. Niki Kimling, a psychologist from Stamford, Connecticut, was particularly smitten. Dr. Kimling loved the Colony cats, and always brought them exotic toys and playthings. One year, she left twenty-five cans of expensive cat food for their Christmas feast—much preferred to their regular fare of dry kibble. But no matter how much Dr. Kimling pampered the other cats, Gail was her favorite. Every year, she called a few weeks before her visit and requested the company of Gail. The cats weren’t supposed to stay inside the condominiums, but for eight days every year, Gail lived with Dr. Kimling, who would buy her expensive cat food, brush her, sleep with her, and basically spoil her rotten. If Gail could have been spoiled rotten, that is. Gail never let popularity change her easygoing personality (like Dewey; so cats can manage to control that feline ego), and she never insisted on being an indoor cat at any other time of the year. But she remembered Dr. Kimling, and she loved with complete abandon her eight days a year as the doctor’s “rented” cat.

  Renter, adopter, or merely a petter, if you were a cat lover, the Colony was for you. In the decade since Mary Nan took Boogie into her heart, the resort had become, quite by accident, a little patch of cat heaven in the paradise of Sanibel. You couldn’t walk five feet without seeing cats hiding under the bushes, strolling across your path, or chasing each other across the lawns. Every day, it seemed, Mary Nan spotted cats lounging on closed screened porches and coming out of bungalows with happy guests, even though they weren’t allowed in the rental units.

  And it wasn’t just cats. One afternoon, Mary Nan looked out her window and saw eight cats and two raccoons lying on a bench in the warm winter Sanibel sun. Another time, a guest spotted a raccoon washing its hands in the pool. The wild animals, she realized, had moved right onto the grounds and mixed with the feral cats. Neither group seemed to mind. The cats, in fact, didn’t seem to mind any other animals. Except for the palm rats. Sanibel Island’s least popular guests (with the exception of the big tropical roaches known as palmetto bugs) were the rats that liked to hide in the leaves of the island’s ever-present palm trees. Mary Nan might not have been able to open her eyes without seeing a cat, but she never, not once, saw a palm rat on the grounds of the Colony Resort. Not when there were twenty-eight cats roaming the few acres of ground. And that was just the cats Mary Nan had identified and named.

  Of course, as I know from my adventures with Dewey, there are always people uncomfortable with attempts at fostering feline-human friendship. I’m sure the resort’s board of directors heard plenty of complaints, although I’m also sure they kept them from Mary Nan. They were supportive, perhaps beyond the bounds of rationality, but eventually even the directors had enough. They weren’t opposed to cats on the property, but the current population was way beyond their comfort zone. Despite the protests of some guests, Mary Nan and Larry agreed the cat colony at the Colony Resort would have to be trimmed. It was time. Larry was spending hours every day filling food bowls, inspecting the cats for signs of illness or injury, and repairing cat-damaged items. The outdoor cats, although well cared for, were less healthy than house cats, and leukemia and FIV, the cat form of AIDS, spread widely through the population. The average life expectancy at Colony Resort was only eight or nine years, and putting down so many cats took an emotional toll on Larry and Mary Nan.

  It was hardest on Larry, who always took them for their final shots. Putting down Easy, Carl the groundskeeper’s favorite cat, was especially difficult. She was so old and weak, her circulatory system had collapsed, and Larry had to hold her down while the veterinarian poked repeatedly at her backside. She cried, and stared into Larry’s eyes with fear and accusation, until Larry felt like the lowest heel in the world. Then she shut her eyes and died. He left the office crying, with her limp body in his arms, and brought her home to be buried. He was in such an emotional fog, he forgot to pay the veterinary bill.

  Through natural death and the occasional adoption, Mary Nan began to slowly pare down the number of cats living at the resort. With the help of a donation from Gail’s friend and benefactor Dr. Kimling, and with vouchers donated by the South Trail Animal Hospital in Fort Myers, she started to spay and neuter the rest of the colony. A nonprofit organization called PAWS Rescue had recently been formed to neuter and find homes for the feral cats of Sanibel, so all over the island the cat population was being contained. Mary Nan once mentioned to a member of the organization, “I wish I could do more to help you.”

  “Don’t worry,” the woman replied. “You’re running your own PAWS organization out there.”

  Most of the cats at Colony Resort came in quietly for their trip to the vet, either because of their trust in Mary Nan and Larry or through blissful ignorance of what awaited them. Some cats resisted. Some, more feral than the others, were simply hard to catch. It took weeks for Mary to capture Prissy, a huge, muscular male cat that was completely misnamed. She managed to struggle him into a carrier for his trip to the vet, but then made the mistake of reaching in to adjust the blanket she use
d to make the trip more comfortable. Prissy lashed out and scratched her from her elbow to her wrist. The cut was so bad, and so full of blood, that she rushed to the emergency room. Since Mary was diabetic, and a claw wound was prone to infection, the doctors decided to cut out the torn tissue. The operation cost eight thousand dollars and caught the attention of local animal control officials, but Mary insisted it wasn’t Prissy’s fault. He had never been in a cage; he was scared; he must have, secretly, been angry about that name. A few weeks later, Larry caught Prissy and was scratched so badly, he contemplated going to the hospital, too. But they were sure, as a repeat offender, Prissy would be doomed. So the next day, they put sleeping pills in his food. Somehow, Prissy managed to wander off and hide in the bushes. He must have gotten a fantastic sleep, because Mary Nan and Larry didn’t see him for two days. In the end, twenty-five cats were neutered at Colony Resort. Prissy wasn’t one of them.

  With most of the cats neutered, and, thanks to PAWS, fewer feral cats roaming the gorgeous palm-lined streets and sea grass-covered dunes of Sanibel Island, the cat colony at the Colony Resort began to dwindle. Mary Nan’s favorite cat, Chimilee, died of leukemia and was buried beside the screened porch next to Tabitha, the beloved Siamese that had started it all. A striped cat with lips so black they looked drawn on with Magic Marker was buried outside their bathroom window, where he often sat. Two cats were buried by the fountain in the center of the courtyard, which they had always treated as their personal water bowl. Dr. Kimling stopped visiting in the late 1990s, after the death of her husband. Her beloved Gail died soon after, at the age of twelve. She was buried outside the door of number 34, the unit Dr. Kimling had rented every year.

  The last cat to live at the Colony Resort was Maira, a direct descendant of Boogie, the dappled gray that Mary Nan had so innocently given a dish of milk almost twenty years before. Maira was always a loner, and even when the cat colony was at its height, she had gravitated to Mary Nan and Larry. Now, with the others gone, Maira moved into the bungalow and deeper into the daily routine of their lives. She wasn’t an overly sentimental cat, but she was always there on the fringes, a shadow that followed them through their busy days. As the years went by, she became quieter, but also sweeter, as if she knew she was the last link to precious days, and that it was her obligation to slowly wind to a close those two decades spent in a joyous, laughing, whirlwind community of fur. She died in 2004, having spent five years in Mary Nan and Larry’s home as the last living member of the beloved cat community of Colony Resort.