I can’t believe I hadn’t read this memoir when it first came out in 2008! I’d somehow missed it, but found an updated edition from 2017 on kindle and just finished reading it as an ebook. This version has some added later content, updating us on the lives of the people who knew and loved this charming, wonderful cat and including sweet letters from readers showing just how much Dewey touched the world.
Vicki Myron, head librarian in the small town of Spencer, Iowa, found a tiny kitten, nearly frozen, in the library’s book drop one cold winter morning. She took the kitten to a vet, nursed him to health, and named him Dewey, for obvious reasons 🙂 She kept him in the library, since he was most comfortable there, and he became and remained the official library cat for the next 18 years.
Despite his sad beginnings (who would drop a tiny kitten in a book drop in dangerously cold temperatures?), Dewey turned out to be a very good-natured little cat, outgoing, affable, and happy, jumping up on people’s laps, cuddling in their arms as they read, making friends with special needs children and the elderly. At first there was some resistance – what if people didn’t like cats or were allergic – etc. etc. But everyone grew to like Dewey so much that any objections soon evaporated.
Spencer was a small town deeply affected by the emergence of factory farming, which destroyed small farms and a way of life. Dewey was instrumental in cheering people up during very depressing times.
Myron is a really interesting, endearing figure herself. She became a struggling single mother after divorcing an alcoholic husband, and a non-traditional student when she went back to library school. Later, she battled breast cancer. Eventually Dewey grew old, and eventually of course he passed on, and Myron, along with the town mourned. In the 2017 edition, you learn about Myron retiring, getting remarried, and the new cat she adopted (Page Turner), starkly different from Dewey, but just as lovable in his own way. Myron says she didn’t know how many details of her own life she should include, but you as a reader connect to the humans just as much as you do the animals they love. She goes through many of the struggles we all do, and so her story is very relatable.
Wonderful, wonderful book, and I will never forget Dewey, or Myron.
