Dewey the library cat became world celebrity

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/10/2008 (6335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Writers such as Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and George Orwell in Animal Farm use anthropomorphism in an unsentimental way, as does Beatrix Potter, who adopts a brisk approach to her fictional animals, Peter Rabbit’s father ending up in Mr. McGregor’s stew pot.

These writers make their animal characters part of a world that is dangerous and often violent.

Vicki Myron, a retired U.S. librarian and author of the unlikely bestseller Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, takes a more sentimental approach to her allegedly true story of an abandoned kitten who becomes a community favourite in the small town of Spencer, Iowa.

The tale begins on a bone-chilling early Prairie morning in 1988, as Myron, the librarian director, opens the library doors and finds a frozen, trembling kitten in the returned books slot.

Her response is immediate and overwhelming: “I lost every bone in my body. I am not a mushy person but a single mother and farm girl who has steered her life through hard times.”

Dewey (named, appropriately, after the library sorting decimal system) is received rapturously by the rest of the staff.

They bathe him and return his matted fur to a clean, smooth coat.

He purrs in spite of his frozen feet, promptly making himself at home. Permission from the library board is obtained as the local paper headlines the “purrfect addition” to the library.

Myron rejoices, “We were laughing, we were happier: Dewey had brought us together.”

Well, if it worked for John Grogan in his dog story Marley & Me, why shouldn’t it work here?

Patrons soon take the resident feline as part of the fixtures and fittings, and Myron recounts daily incidents and chuckles that inevitably thin out after a while, leaving her to obvious comments:

“When you walk into the library, you still notice the books: shelf after shelf and row after row of books.” (As one would).

At this point, Myron, perhaps wisely, leaves Dewey to shred the curtains while she introduces us to the arcane delights of northwest Iowa.

We learn about her farming family, her drunken, estranged husband and rebellious teenage daughter, the 1966 Iowa Girls Basketball Champions and the challenges of outdoor plumbing.

Apparently, life in farming country is full of vicissitudes, in spite of the interesting topography. The grasshopper invasion of 1879 and other problems make one almost grateful for the eventual arrival of Wal-Mart a century later.

But before we return to see if Dewey has clawed the furniture, we learn of the Great Fire of 1931 and that 70 per cent of the American diet is corn.

(Mind you, Canadians already know this, having long ago digested Torontonian Margaret Visser’s 1986 non-fiction book Much Depends on Dinner.)

What Myron conveys well are the subtle but meaningful changes that animals can make in a working environment.

Dewey’s fame spreads. He receives visitors with insouciance and is mentioned in the papers. Japanese news teams interview him. But after 19 years of entertaining library visitors, he succumbs to old age and ill health.

Myron received a $1.2-million advance to tell his story. Buried in front of the library in 2006, Dewey is judged to be irreplaceable.

But for $1.2 million, you might be irreplaceable, too.

Bernadette Phillips is an East St. Paul writer and artist whose cat runs the household.