Eleven people! Can you believe it? That must have been one wild, cat-saving alley party.
THE DAILY ROUTINE
As developed by Dewey Readmore Books soon after his regrettable romp outside the Spencer Public Library, and followed for the rest of his life.
7:30 a.m. Mom Arrives. Demand food, but don’t be too hasty. Watch everything she does. Follow at her heels. Make her feel special.
8:00 a.m. Staff Arrives. Spend an hour checking in with everyone. Find out who is having a tough morning and give them the honor of petting me for as long as they want. Or until . . .
8:58 a.m. Prep Time. Take up position by the front door, ready for first patron of the day. Also has the added benefit of alerting distracted staff to current time. I hate it when they open late.
9:00–10:30 a.m. Doors Open. Greet patrons. Follow the nice ones, ignore the mean ones, but give everyone a chance to brighten their day by paying attention to me. Petting me is a gift to you for visiting the library.
10:30 a.m. Find Lap for Nap. Laps are for naps, not playing. Playing in laps is for kittens.
11:30–11:45 a.m. Lounge. Middle of adult nonfiction, head up, paws crossed in front. The humans call this the Buddha pose. I call it the Lion. Hakuna Matata. No, I don’t know what it means, but the kids keep talking about it.
11:45 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Sprawl. When it gets too tiring to hold my head up, assume the sprawclass="underline" full out on back, paws sticking out in four directions. Petting is assured. But don’t fall asleep. Fall asleep, and you’re vulnerable to a belly wrestle attack. I hate the belly wrestle attack.
12:15–12:30 p.m. Lunch in the Staff Room. Anybody got yogurt? No? Then never mind.
12:30–1:00 p.m. Cart Ride! When the afternoon clerks shelve books, jump on the cart and hitch a ride around the library. Oh, man, it’s relaxing to go completely limp and let my legs hang down between the bars of the metal rack.
1:00–3:55 p.m. Afternoon Free Time. See how the day is going. Mix in a trip up to the lights with more lap time. Greet the afternoon crowd. Spend ten minutes with Mom. Fur licking is encouraged, not mandatory. And don’t forget to find a nice box to nap in. As if it’s possible to forget that!
3:55 p.m. Dinner. They keep thinking dinnertime is four o’clock. If I sit here long enough, they’ll eventually learn.
4:55 p.m. Mom Leaves. Jump around so she’ll remember you want to play. A running jump off a bookshelf, complete with somersault, works every time.
5:30 p.m. Play. Mom calls it Boodha track. I call it the ball thingy because there’s nothing better than batting that ball around that track. Except for my red yarn. I absolutely love my red yarn. Does anyone want to dangle it for me?
8:55 p.m. Last Shift Leaves. Repeat 4:55 routine, but don’t expect the same results unless Joy’s working the night shift. Joy always finds time to wad up paper and toss it across the library. Sprint after the paper as fast as possible, but once you get there, always ignore it.
9:00 p.m.–7:30 a.m. My Time! None of your business, nosy.
Chapter 17
Dewey in the Modern World
I’m not naive. I know not everyone in Spencer embraced Dewey. For instance, that woman still wrote regular letters threatening to bring her cow downtown if the city didn’t stop the injustice, the horror, of a cat living in a public building. She was the most vocal, but she certainly wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand the Dewey phenomenon.
“What’s so special about that cat?” they would say over a cup of coffee at Sister’s Café. “He never leaves the library. He sleeps a lot. He doesn’t do anything.”
By which they meant Dewey didn’t create jobs. Dewey was appearing regularly in magazines, newspapers, and on the radio around the country, but he wasn’t improving our municipal parks. He wasn’t paving roads. He wasn’t out recruiting new businesses. The worst of the farm crisis had passed; spirits were rising; it was time for Spencer to spread its wings and attract new employers to our plucky Midwest town fairly far off the beaten track.
The Spencer economic development commission scored its first big triumph in 1992 when Montfort, a large meatpacking company headquartered in Colorado, decided to lease the slaughterhouse on the north end of town. In 1952, when local businessmen developed the property, the plant was the pride of Spencer. It was locally owned, locally run, and employed local workers at top wages. In 1974, the salary was fifteen dollars an hour, the best-paying job in town. Trucks lined up for a mile waiting to be unloaded. The company began packaging several products under a Spencer Foods label. That label was a source of pride, especially when you’d drive to Sioux Falls or down to Des Moines and see the Spencer name in the big new grocery stores.
In 1968, sales started dropping. Processing conglomerates had moved into nearby towns with more efficient plants and cheaper labor. The owners tried to rebrand the products and retool the plant, but nothing worked. In 1978, the Spencer Packing Company was sold to a national competitor. When the workers wouldn’t take nonunion wages of five-fifty an hour, the company closed the plant and moved the work to Skylar, Nebraska. Land O’Lakes moved in next, but when the recession hit in the mid-1980s, they closed up and left, too. They didn’t have ties to the community, and there was no economic reason to stay.
Ten years later, Montfort negotiated a lease with the absentee owner of the plant. They just needed the building rezoned so they could expand and upgrade it. Small towns all over the country were desperate for jobs, but the jobs that had paid fifteen dollars in 1974 were being offered by Montfort at five dollars an hour with almost no benefits. This was slaughter work, which was physically brutal and psychologically numbing, not to mention smelly, noisy, dirty, and polluting. Locals didn’t want the work, at least not for long. Most of the people who ended up in the jobs were Hispanic immigrants. Towns around Spencer with slaughterhouses, such as Storm Lake, were already 25 percent Hispanic, or more.
Still, Montfort had steamrolled through dozens of towns, and they didn’t even bother addressing our concerns or offering concessions. The town leaders were for the plant, why worry about the citizens? The city council offered the usual public forum on the proposed zoning changes. The forum usually took place in front of five people in a little room at the council offices. The demand was so great this time that they held this debate in the largest room in town, the middle school gym. Three thousand people showed up that night, more than 25 percent of the town. It wasn’t much of a debate.