This book is not Dewey: The Sequel, nor is it meant to be. There is only one Dewey (the book), just as there is only one Dewey (my amazing cat). But there are thousands of stories. There are millions of cats that could, if given the chance, change a life. They are out there, living with the people featured in this book and millions of others like them. They are also out there in much worse circumstances: in rescue shelters, in feral cat colonies, or fighting for survival alone on the frozen streets, waiting for their chance.
Of all the lessons I’ve learned over the past twenty years, perhaps the most important is this: Angels come in all forms. Love can arrive from anywhere. One special animal can change your life. He can change a town. In a small way, he can change the world.
And so can you.
ONE
Dewey and Tobi
“She was a quiet cat. She was gentle and . . . she never wanted to get in any trouble with anybody, she just wanted to live and let live, you know what I mean?”
For much of the world, my beloved Spencer, Iowa, with a population of about ten thousand, is a small town. The streets, mostly numbered on a square grid that extends twenty-nine blocks north-south (with a river in the middle) and twenty-five blocks east-west, are easy to navigate. The stores, primarily extending along Grand Avenue, our main street, are sufficient without being overwhelming. The one-story library, near the corner of Grand Avenue and Third Street, in the heart of downtown, is intimate and welcoming.
But size is relative, especially in a place like Iowa, a state with one-sixth the population of Florida but almost twice as many incorporated towns. Many of us here are from even smaller towns than Spencer, like Moneta, the place I consider my hometown even though I grew up on a farm two miles away. Moneta was six blocks. It had five commercial buildings, if you include the bar and the dance hall. At its height, its population was just over two hundred people. That’s fewer people than come through the door of the Spencer Public Library every single day.
So around here, in Iowa farm country, Spencer is large. It’s the kind of town people drive to, not through. It’s the kind of town where you recognize most of your fellow citizens but don’t necessarily know their names. A town where everyone hears about the closing of a business and has an opinion, but not everyone is directly affected. When a farm goes under in Clay County, where Spencer is located, we might not remember the farmer, but we remember someone like him, and we care and understand. Whether we’re from an old line of blue-collar farmers, or one of the recent Hispanic immigrants who fill many of the rungs of the vast industrial agricultural economy, we share more than a straight-lined, carefully marked plot of earth called Spencer, Iowa. We share an attitude, a work ethic, a worldview, and a future.
But we don’t all know each other. As the director of the Spencer Public Library, that was always clear to me. I could walk through the library at any moment, on any day, and recognize the regular visitors. I knew many of their names. I had grown up with a lot of them, and often I knew their families, too. I remember, more than a decade ago, a library regular sliding toward oblivion over a series of months. I had known him since high school, and I knew his past. He had been heavily involved in drugs, kicked the habit, but was clearly in trouble again. So I called his brother, an old friend, who drove in from out of state to arrange for care. That is the blessing of a town like Spencer: Connections run deep. Help and friendship are often only a phone call away.
But the library drew visitors from nine counties—when I retired we had eighteen thousand card-carrying members, almost twice the population of Spencer—so there was no way I could know everyone. One of the many regular visitors I recognized but never knew was a woman named Yvonne Barry. She was fifteen years younger than I, so I hadn’t gone to school with her. She wasn’t from Clay County originally, so I didn’t know her family. The staff would watch the homeless man who came every morning to visit Dewey, because we wanted to make sure he was doing all right, but Yvonne was always well dressed and groomed, so there never seemed to be a reason to worry. And she was intensely quiet. She never initiated conversation. If you said, “Good morning, Yvonne,” the most you received was a whispered, “Hello.” She liked magazines, and she always checked out books. Beyond that, I knew only one thing about her: She loved Dewey. I could see that in the smile on her face every time he approached her.
Everyone thought she had a unique relationship with Dewey. I don’t know how many times someone whispered to me, in strictest confidence, “Don’t tell anybody, because they’ll be jealous, but Dewey and I have something special.” I’d smile and nod and wait for someone else to say the exact same thing. Dewey was so generous with his affection, you see, that everyone felt the connection. For them, Dewey was one of a kind. But for Dewey, they were one of three hundred . . . five hundred . . . a thousand regular friends. I thought he couldn’t possibly cherish them all.
So I assumed Yvonne was another occasional companion. She spent time with Dewey, but they didn’t run to each other. I don’t remember Dewey waiting for her. But somehow, in the course of Yvonne’s visit, they always seemed to end up together, wandering the library on a secret, silent quest, happy as clams.
It wasn’t until Dewey’s passing that Yvonne started talking. A little. For nineteen years, I had kept up a steady stream of Dewey chats with many of the library regulars. After his death, he seemed like all we could discuss. It wasn’t until the end of the initial rush, though, when the cold slog of February settled over us and the realization that Dewey was gone had dug deep into our bones, that Yvonne approached me, quietly and nervously, and talked about Dewey. She told me how much she had looked forward to seeing him. How much he had understood her. How gentle and brave he was. She told me, more than once, about the day Dewey slept on her lap for an hour, and how special that made her feel.
“That’s nice,” I told her. “Thank you.”
I appreciated her thoughtfulness, especially since I knew how hard it was for her to initiate conversation. But I was busy, and I never asked her anything more. Why should I? Dewey sat on everyone’s lap. Of course it was special.
After a few short conversations, Yvonne stopped talking. She faded back into the background, and her special moment with Dewey became just another brushstroke on the giant portrait of his life. It wasn’t until two years later, after I heard how thrilled she was that her name appeared in Dewey, that I sat down with her. By then, I had collected so many sweet but simple stories from regular library users about Dewey—stories that amounted to little more than “I can’t explain it, he just made me happy”—that I doubted there was much to this one.
But Yvonne’s story was different. There was something about her moment with Dewey that reminded me why I have always loved libraries. And small towns. And cats. Yvonne was so closed off, I must admit, that I didn’t learn much about her. I thought I had, at the time, but when I read this story, I realized that she remained, and always will remain, something of a mystery.
What I learned instead is how different lives can be, even when they are lived alongside each other. And how easy it is to get lost, even in a straightforward little town like Spencer, Iowa. I learned how hard it is to know someone, and how little that matters if your heart is open to their needs. We don’t have to understand; we just have to care.