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

by Vicki Myron

  But that was where the problem started. You see, I didn’t want another cat. I always told myself, Someday. Someday I’ll be ready. But every time I thought about it, that day seemed a long way off. I had spent nineteen years with Dewey, and I still missed him terribly. I had owned cats all my life, and they had all died, of course, but Dewey was different. He was one of a kind. I had loved him so much, and thought of him so highly, that I had spent a year writing a book about him. Now I was spending much of my time at book events, talking about his life and legacy. I was attached to him, forever. It wouldn’t be fair to adopt another cat. The new cat would always be compared to Dewey, and how could it ever compete?

  Then one December morning, almost exactly two years after Dewey’s death, a Japanese film crew arrived in Spencer. Dewey had been famous in Japan ever since, five years before, a crew had come from Tokyo to film him for a documentary. This second crew wanted follow-up footage of me at the library, but before I could take off my coat and settle in for the interview, the library staff grabbed me and pushed me back to my former office. I could tell they were excited, but I had no idea why. Then I saw a tiny kitten crouched in the back corner of the room.

  Oh, she was cute. She had long copper fur, with a magnificent ruff at the neck. She weighed two pounds, maximum, and half of that was hair. But I didn’t want another cat. And I definitely didn’t want another cat that looked like Dewey. If I adopted another cat, I had always told myself, I needed a clean break from the memories. A black cat. A white and gray calico, maybe. But when I saw that little orange kitten huddled by the heater in the back corner of the office, my heart leapt. It was like seeing Dewey on his first morning: so tiny, so helpless, so wonderfully, beautifully ginger brown. She had green eyes instead of Dewey’s gorgeous gold, and her tail was stubby instead of fluffy, but otherwise . . .

  I picked the kitten up and cradled her in my arms. She looked at me and began to purr. Just as with Dewey on his first morning, I melted.

  Then I heard her story, a story so much like Dewey’s story, in its way, that it made me hurt. After all, we were in the middle of another bitterly cold Spencer winter, and several feet of snow and ice had been on the ground for weeks. Sue Seltzer, a computer technician who worked occasionally at the library, had been edging her car down a side street in downtown Spencer, when she saw a truck swerve outside Nelson Hearing Aid Service. She thought there was a clump of ice in the road, so she slowed down. Then she saw the clump move. It was a bedraggled little kitten, shivering and staggering, with ice and twigs matted in its fur. She picked it up, looked in its face, and thought: Dewey. Sue had always been a big fan of the Dew.

  Sue took the kitten to her office and bathed her. Like Dewey, the kitten purred in the warm water. Sue already had five cats, and her husband refused to entertain the thought of making it six, so she decided to take the kitten to the library. If any cat was destined to take Dewey’s place, she figured, it was this tiny girl. But since the publication of Dewey, the Spencer Public Library had been deluged with cats. Two poor kittens, I regret to say, had even been shoved into the book drop. The only sensible thing was to implement and publicize a blanket No Cats policy. And that’s why, when I finished my interview with the Japanese crew, the kitten was still waiting in the corner of the office. But now, she was sitting on Glenn’s lap.

  They both looked up at me. Glenn smiled and sort of shrugged. My heart melted for the second time. And the tiny kitten, so reminiscent of Dewey it was both scary and exciting, came home with me.

  That night, I mentioned the kitten on Dewey’s Web site. A boy named Cody wrote back to suggest the name Page. I was turning a new page in my life, he wrote; what could be more appropriate?

  The next day, Page did something very Dewey-like: She appeared in the Spencer Daily Reporter, our little five-days-a-week newspaper. The story spread to the Sioux City Journal. Soon, an AP photographer was on his way to Spencer from Des Moines. Just like that, Page and I were appearing in hundreds of newspapers around the country. Librarian in Iowa adopts a cat! Sounds like hard-hitting national news, right?

  “What’s next?” Glenn joked. “Are they going to start reporting what you had for breakfast?”

  That news report may have been the last Dewey-like thing my new cat ever did. Much to my relief, Page had a personality of her own. She wasn’t like her older brother at all.

  Well . . . in one regard maybe, because when we took her to the vet—the same vet who treated Dewey and discovered his tumor—we received a startling diagnosis. Page was a boy.

  So Page Turner, as we renamed him, had boyness in common with Dewey, too. But beyond that? No. Beyond that, there was nothing Dewey about our new cat.

  He was clumsy, for one thing. The first night he was at my house, he broke a ceramic angel when he jumped on my side table. The first night! Dewey was graceful. He had gone nineteen years without breaking anything. Page Turner wasn’t even graceful when he lay down. Instead of easing himself down like a normal kitten, he flopped over on the ground like a hairy dust mop. And it’s so not true that cats always land on their feet. Page Turner would be sitting on the back of the sofa and suddenly just fall off onto his back. He even fell off the bed when he was sleeping. Bam, right onto his back, and he never even woke up.

  Dewey loved heat. He would get so hot lounging in front of the library heater that you couldn’t touch his fur. Page Turner hated heat. Even in winter, I found him curled up in the coldest place in the house: the basement stairs. He hated sunlight. He was skittish around strangers. And he never curled up in my lap, which was Dewey’s favorite spot. Page Turner preferred to lie on top of my feet.

  He didn’t care about my rules. No matter how many times I put him down, he always jumped on the dinner table. He ran back and forth through the drapes, driving himself into a frenzy. Without fail, he chose my best furniture to sharpen his claws on. He chased his tail like a dog. He stared at the TV like a slack-jawed teenager. When I put ice in his water dish to keep it fresh, he fished it out and chased it around the house. Dewey hated water so much, he wouldn’t even drink it. Page never cared about getting soaked. He never cared about being laughed at. Dewey was dignified. He couldn’t stand being the butt of the joke. Page Turner never seemed to mind that I was doubled over laughing at his antics.

  Thank goodness, I said to myself, they didn’t try to put this cat in the library. It’s a common misconception that just any old cat can live in a library. Page Turner, although appropriately named, was far too high-strung for the job. He was too distrustful and shy. He didn’t have a quiet dignity about him. He wasn’t Dewey, of course, but he wasn’t Rusty, either. He wasn’t cool. He didn’t have empathy. He wouldn’t rub against you when you were down. His advice, if he could have given any, would have been abysmal I’m sure. But we can’t all be the prime rib on the plate of life, right? Some of us, like Page Turner, have to be the broccoli.

  Find your place. That’s one of the lessons Dewey taught me. We all have a place where we will thrive. By the summer of 2009—when the book tours finally slowed and I started to think about writing this book—it was clear that Page Turner had mellowed out and found his place. He had been so unsure and frantic those first few months, I could now see, because life on the street had been hard. He ran from every creak because, I had no doubt, he had been hurt out there. He gulped food because he had been starving. On the day we took him home, I’m not sure he was ready to believe in anyone. But he had trusted Glenn. Just like Rusty, Page Turner could see the gentleness and love in the man’s soul.

  Sure, he’s spoiled now. He interrupts our dinner until we give him a few bites to eat. He licks the bottom of the cheese container that comes with my soft pretzel (my nightly vice!). He attacks my feet when I’m trying to sleep, lounges on my keyboard when I’m trying to write, and does nothing on Saturdays but watch NASCAR with Glenn. You may think this is somehow bad for him—unhealthy, unproductive, unnatural, and all the other insults that have been hurled at my trea
tment of Dewey since that book was published—but I know Page Turner is happy. At six weeks old, he was shivering in the middle of a Spencer street, filthy dirty, with ice clumps and sticks matted in his fur. Now he lives in a house with two people who adore him. He has cat food whenever he wants. He sleeps in a warm bed. He has toys to play with—even the kind with annoying bells!— and a microwave to watch. He hates strangers—I didn’t see him for four days the first time my grandchildren came for a visit—but he has a little hidey-hole behind the suitcases in my closet where he can go whenever he feels afraid. He doesn’t go outside, but in the summer we open a window so he can watch and listen and fantasize about the birds in the garden.

  My friends think Page Turner looks like Dewey. I don’t see it. They are both fluffy orange cats, but Page is a different shape (that would be 100 percent round). He’s bigger than Dewey. And although his eyes are changing from green to Dewey’s golden amber, they don’t look anything like Dewey’s eyes. Page is not an old soul. He is not wise. He is an energetic, sometimes naughty, often exasperating klutz. He makes me laugh and shake my head and wonder, What the heck will that cat do next? He’s warm and loving and, let’s face it, he gives Glenn and me something to focus on. Something that’s ours. Together.

  I’m not saying Page Turner is the child Glenn always wanted to have around. He’s not even a new version of Rusty, if the truth be known. Rusty was Glenn’s companion when he didn’t want any company. For a while, he was the glue that held Glenn’s life together. But they’ve both moved on. Whenever Glenn visits him now, Rusty looks him over, like he’s checking his old friend’s condition. They meow at each other—yes, Glenn meows—and Rusty hops into Glenn’s arms and mashes his cheek into Glenn’s beard. Then Rusty wanders off to his new life. He’s an easygoing cat, the kind that can be happy almost anywhere, and he’s found his place in Jenny’s home.

  And Glenn? Well, he’s a sucker for Page Turner. Whenever we’re away overnight, he’s the one asking, “Have you called to check on Page? Is he all right?” He’s the one always buying him little gifts and giving him extra bites of food. And please, do not ask to see pictures. Glenn has more than five hundred photographs of Page Turner stored on his camera, and he’ll show you each one. He’s got Page Turner’s pictures on his cell phone, and I swear he changes the screen saver every day.

  Rusty was Glenn’s friend and confidante. Page Turner . . . he’s more like Glenn’s grandchild. And no, I’m not saying he’s literally a grandchild or that he’s a replacement for something Glenn was missing. Life, love, and desire are never that simple. Happiness is never something you can calculate. At its best, it’s something that catches you unaware and that you never fully understand.

  All I’m saying, I suppose, is that Dewey was the wise and caring cat, the one who helped me and the town of Spencer through some very tough times. Rusty was the cool dude that wandered in at the right time. Page Turner is a perpetual child. He’s fun. He’s foolish. He’s dependent. And I wouldn’t want him any other way.

  So, no, Page Turner didn’t help me get over the loss of Dewey. Time did that. Page Turner just eased me into the next part of my life. The part with Glenn. And grandkids. And travel. And good health that I do have to constantly monitor and for that reason will always cherish. We’ve built a new life together, Glenn and I. We’ve bought a house. Page Turner made that house a home and our little trio a family.

  What more should we ever ask of our cats?

  Acknowledgments

  My utmost thanks to the people who opened their lives so that their stories could be told in this book, and to all the people who helped fill out those stories with additional information, such as Adrienna (Sweetie) Case, Dr. Niki Kimling, and Harris Riggs. And, of course, a special thank you to all the wonderful cats who are the heart and soul of these stories; without them, none of this would have been written. This book is, truly, for all the cats around the world that brighten and enhance our lives.

  To Peter McGuigan, my agent and friend, how can I thank you enough? Thank you to all the wonderful people at Foundry Literary + Media, especially Hannah Brown-Gordon, Stephanie Abou, and Dan McGillivray.

  To Carrie Thornton, my editor, for always believing in this idea, and to Brian Tart, who seems to run the whole show from behind a mysterious curtain, for his support of her enthusiastic support. Lily Kosner—you are cool. Thank you Christine Ball (Publicity), Carrie Swetonic (Marketing), Monica Benalcazar (Art), and Susan Schwartz and Rachael Hicks (Managing Editorial): there would be no Magic without you.

  Thank you, as always, to my friend and cowriter, Bret Witter, to his family—Beth, Lydia, and Isaac—and to his cats—Blackie and Ally. I know Bret wants to say thank you as well to Kayla Voskuhl, whom he met during an appearance at the Kentucky School for the Blind and whose laughter, optimism, and love of her cat, Ralph, inspired him. I am so sorry we didn’t have room to include that story in this book.

  To my own new little family, Glenn Albertson and Page Turner—I couldn’t do all this without your love and constant support.

  To all the Dewey fans who have written or e-mailed but didn’t make this book. Your stories have touched my heart and proved to me that Dewey’s Magic continues to touch lives around the world. Thank you for your kind words.

  And last but certainly not least, to Dewey Readmore Books. His legacy of love and acceptance still teaches me important life lessons. I miss you, my friend.

  Animals in Need

  Many of the relationships in this book, like thousands of others around the world, were made possible by the hard work of organizations dedicated to helping abused and homeless animals. The following is a list of groups that changed the lives of the animals in this book—and their owners—forever. If you are inspired by these stories, I hope you will consider giving of your time and resources to these or other similar organizations around the world.

  Siouxland Humane Society

  1015 Tri-View Ave., Sioux City, Iowa 51103

  www.siouxlandhumanesociety.org

  North Shore Animal League

  25 Davis Avenue, Port Washington, NY 11050

  www.nsalamerica.org

  Humane Society of Kodiak

  2409 Mill Bay Road, Kodiak, AK 99615

  www.kodiakanimalshelter.com

  Northwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center

  P.O. Box 4273, Bellingham, WA 98227

  www.northwestwildlife.org

  Adopt-A-Pet

  13575 N. Fenton Road, Fenton, MI 48430

  www.adoptapetfenton.com

  Humane Society of Huron Valley

  3100 Cherry Hill Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105

  www.hshv.org

  People for Pets

  2312 Highway Boulevard, Spencer, IA 51301

  www.peopleforpets.com