After the program, Dewey climbed into his bed above Kay’s desk, clearly exhausted. Kay came over and gave him a gentle scratch on the chin. I knew that touch, that quiet look. It was a thank-you, the one you give an old friend or a spouse after you’ve watched them across a crowded room and realized how wonderful they are, and how lucky you are to have them in your life. I half expected her to say, “That’ll do, cat, that’ll do,” like the farmer in the movie Babe, but this time Kay left all the words unsaid.
Two months later, in early November, Dewey’s gait became a bit unsteady. He started peeing excessively, sometimes on the paper outside his litter box, which he had never done before. But he wasn’t hiding. He was still jumping up and down from the circulation desk. He still interacted with patrons. He didn’t seem to be in pain. I called Dr. Franck, and she advised me not to bring him in but to watch him closely.
One morning near the end of the month, Dewey wasn’t waving. All those years, and I could count on one hand the number of times Dewey wasn’t waving when I arrived in the morning. Instead he was standing at the front door, just waiting for me. I ushered him to the litter box and gave him his can of cat food. He ate a few bites, then walked with me on our morning rounds. I was busy preparing for a trip to Florida—my brother Mike’s daughter Natalie was getting married and the whole family was going to be there—so I left Dewey with the staff for the rest of the morning. As always, he came in while I was working to sniff my office vent and make sure I was safe. The older he got, the more he protected the ones he loved.
At nine thirty I went out for Dewey’s breakfast of the moment, a Hardee’s bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. When I returned, Dewey didn’t come running. I figured the deaf old boy didn’t hear the door. I found him sleeping on a chair by the circulation desk, so I swung the bag a few times, floating the smell of eggs his way. He flew out of that chair into my office. I put the egg-and-cheese mush on a paper plate, and he ate three or four bites before curling up on my lap.
At ten thirty, Dewey attended Story Hour. As usual, he greeted every child. An eight-year-old girl was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, in the position we used to call Indian-style. Dewey curled up on her legs and went to sleep. She petted him, the other children took turns petting him, everyone was happy. After Story Hour, Dewey crawled into his fur-lined bed in front of the heater, which was running full blast, and that’s where he was when I left the library at noon. I was going home for lunch, then picking up Dad and driving to Omaha to catch a flight the next morning.
Ten minutes after I got home, the phone rang. It was Jann, one of our clerks. “Dewey’s acting funny.”
“What do you mean funny?”
“He’s crying and walking funny. And he’s trying to hide in the cupboards.”
“I’ll be right down.”
Dewey was hiding under a chair. I picked him up, and he was shaking like the morning I found him. His eyes were big, and I could tell he was in pain. I called the veterinary office. Dr. Franck was out, but her husband, Dr. Beall, was in. He said, “Come right down.” I wrapped Dewey in his towel. It was a cold day, end of November. Dewey snuggled against me immediately.
By the time we arrived at the vet’s office, Dewey was down on the floor of my car by the heater, shaking with fear. I cradled him in my arms and held him against my chest. That’s when I noticed poop sticking out of his behind.
What a relief! It wasn’t serious. It was constipation.
I told Dr. Beall the problem. He took Dewey into the back room to clean out his colon and intestines. He also washed his back end, so Dewey came back wet and cold. He crawled from Dr. Beall’s arms into mine and looked up at me with pleading eyes. Help me. I could tell something still wasn’t right.
Dr. Beall said, “I can feel a mass. It’s not feces.”
“What is it?”
“He needs an X-ray.”
Ten minutes later, Dr. Beall was back with the results. There was a large tumor in Dewey’s stomach, and it was pushing on his kidneys and intestines. That’s why he had been peeing more, and it probably accounted for his peeing outside the litter box.
“It wasn’t there in September,” Dr. Beall said, “which means it’s probably an aggressive cancer. But we’d have to do invasive tests to find out for sure.”
We stood silently, looking at Dewey. I never suspected the tumor. Never. I knew everything about Dewey, all his thoughts and feelings, but he had kept this one thing hidden from me.
“Is he in pain?”
“Yes, I suspect he is. The mass is growing very fast, so it will only get worse.”
“Is there anything you can give him for the pain?”
“No, not really.”
I was holding Dewey in my arms, cradling him like a baby. He hadn’t let me carry him that way in sixteen years. Now he wasn’t even fighting it. He was just looking at me.
“Do you think he’s in constant pain?”
“I can’t imagine that he’s not.”
The conversation was crushing me, flattening me out, making me feel drawn, deflated, tired. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Somehow I had believed Dewey was going to live forever.
I called the library staff and told them Dewey wasn’t coming home. Kay was out of town. Joy was off duty. They reached her at Sears, but too late. Several others came down to say their good-byes. Instead of going to Dewey, though, Sharon walked right up and hugged me. Thank you, Sharon, I needed that. Then I hugged Donna and thanked her for loving Dewey so much. Donna was the last to say her good-byes.
Someone said, “I don’t know if I want to be here when they put him to sleep.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’d rather be alone with him.”
Dr. Beall took Dewey into the back room to insert the IV, then brought him back in a fresh blanket and put him in my arms. I talked to Dewey for a few minutes. I told him how much I loved him, how much he meant to me, how much I didn’t want him to suffer. I explained what was happening and why. I rewrapped his blanket to make sure he was comfortable. What more could I offer him than comfort? I cradled him in my arms and rocked back and forth from foot to foot, a habit started when he was a kitten. Dr. Beall gave him the first shot, followed closely by the second.
He said, “I’ll check for a heartbeat.”
I said, “You don’t need to. I can see it in his eyes.”
Dewey was gone.
Chapter 27
Loving Dewey
I was in Florida for eight days. I didn’t read the newspaper. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t take any phone calls. It was the best possible time to be away because Dewey’s death was hard. Very hard. I broke down on the flight from Omaha and cried all the way to Houston. In Florida, I thought often of Dewey, alone, quietly, but also surrounded by the family that had always sustained me.
I had no idea how far word of Dewey’s death had spread. The next morning, while I sat crying on an airplane to Houston, the local radio station devoted their morning show to memories of Dewey. The Sioux City Journal ran a lengthy story and obituary. I don’t know if that was the source, but the AP wire picked up the story and sent it around the world. Within hours, news of Dewey’s death appeared on the CBS afternoon newsbreak and on MSNBC. The library started getting calls. If I had been in the library, I would have been stuck answering questions from reporters for days, but nobody else on staff felt comfortable speaking to the media. The library secretary, Kim, gave a brief statement, which ended up in what I now think of as Dewey’s public obituary, but that was all. It was enough. Over the next few days, that obituary ran in more than 270 newspapers.