“I found Dewey as a small frozen kitten in our book drop on January 18, 1988,” Vicki Myron, then the director of the Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa, said years later. Someone had pushed him through the after-hours return slot on one of the coldest nights of the year.
The staff warmed him up and decided to keep him. That took approval from the library board and the city council, both of which said yes. He was neutered, vaccinated and given a job. A public contest picked his name: Dewey Readmore Books.
Official staff member
Dewey had his own job description. Staff paid for his food partly by turning in soda cans, and when word spread, donations arrived from as far away as New York. He was written up in Country Magazine and Cat Fancy, appeared on Sioux City television and in the library-cat documentary “Puss in Books,” and became a member of the Library Cat Society.
Mostly, though, he did what library cats do, and the library noticed the difference. “He was the perfect addition to my plans to make the library warm and friendly,” Myron said.
A very public goodbye
Dewey died on November 29, 2006, at 19, eleven days after his birthday, of complications from a stomach tumor. He died in Myron’s arms. His obituary ran in more than 250 newspapers, including The New York Times.
Two years later Myron and co-author Bret Witter published “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World,” which drew a reported $1.2 million advance from Grand Central Publishing. “I feel like Dewey is still taking care of me,” Myron told Library Journal in 2010.
The Spencer Public Library still keeps a page for him, which says he “will be remembered by thousands of people.” It is a fair estimate. Nineteen years is a long time to greet everyone who walks through the door.
Sources
- Spencer Public Library, Dewey the Library Cat
- Library Journal, Q and A: Vicki Myron (May 2010)
- Publishers Weekly, review of Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World (July 2008)
