Dewey (20 page)

“We’ve been watching Dewey,” they said, “and we’re impressed.” Who wouldn’t be? “He seems like an extraordinary cat. And obviously people love him.” You don’t say! “We’d like to use him in a print advertising campaign. We can’t offer money, but we will provide free cat food for life.”

I have to admit, I was tempted. Dewey was a finicky eater, and we were indulgent parents. We were throwing out dishes full of food every day just because he didn’t like the smell, and we were donating a hundred cans of out-of-favor cat food a year. Since the Feed the Kitty campaign of loose change and soda cans didn’t cover the costs and I had vowed to never use a penny of city funds for Dewey’s care, most of that money was coming out of my pocket. I was personally subsidizing the feeding of a good portion of the cats in Spencer.

“I’ll talk to the library board.”

“We’ll send over samples.”

By the time the next library board meeting rolled around, the decision had already been made. Not by me or the board, but by Dewey himself. Mr. Finicky completely rejected the free samples.

Are you kidding me?
he told me with a disdainful sniff.
I can’t shill for this junk.

“I’m sorry,” I told the manufacturer. “Dewey only eats Fancy Feast.”

Chapter 19

The World’s Worst Eater

D
ewey’s pickiness wasn’t just a matter of personality. He had a disease. No, really, it’s true. As far as digestive systems were concerned, that cat really got a lemon.

Dewey always hated being petted on the stomach. Stroke his back, scratch his ears, even pull his tail and poke him in the eye, but never pet his stomach. I didn’t think much of it until Dr. Esterly tried to clean his anal glands when he was about two years old. “I just push down on the glands and squeeze them clean,” he explained. “It will take thirty seconds.”

Sounded easy enough. I held Dewey while Dr. Esterly prepared his equipment, which consisted of a pair of gloves and a paper towel. “Nothing to it, Dewey,” I whispered. “It will be over before you know it.”

But as soon as Dr. Esterly pressed down, Dewey screamed. This wasn’t a mild complaint. This was a full-fledged, terrified cry that ripped out from the base of his stomach. His body bolted like it had been hit by lightning, and his legs scrambled frantically. Then he threw his mouth over my finger and bit down. Hard.

Dr. Esterly looked at my finger. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

I rubbed the sore. “It’s not a problem.”

“Yes, it is a problem. A cat shouldn’t bite like that.”

I wasn’t worried. That wasn’t Dewey. I knew Dewey; he wasn’t a biter. And I could still see the panic in the poor cat’s eyes. He wasn’t looking at anything. He was just staring. The pain had been blinding.

After that, Dewey hated Dr. Esterly. He even hated the thought of getting in the car because it might lead to Dr. Esterly. As soon as we pulled into the veterinary office’s parking lot, he started shaking. The smell of the lobby sent him into uncontrollable tremors. He would bury his head in the crook of my arm as if to say,
Protect me.

As soon as he heard Dr. Esterly’s voice, Dewey growled. Many cats hate the veterinarian in his office but treat him as any other human in the outside world. Not Dewey. He feared Dr. Esterly unconditionally. If he heard his voice in the library, Dewey growled and sprinted to the other side of the room. If Dr. Esterly managed to sneak up on him and reached out to pet him, Dewey sprang up, looked around in panic, and bolted away. I think he recognized Dr. Esterly’s smell. That hand, to Dewey, was the hand of death. He had found his archenemy, and it happened to be one of the nicest men in town.

A few uneventful years went by after the anal gland incident, but Dewey eventually went back to prowling for rubber bands. As a kitten, his rubber band hunting had been halfhearted, and he was easily distracted. At about five years of age, Dewey became serious. I started finding the sticky remnants on the floor almost every morning. His litter box was filled not only with rubber worms but with the occasional drop of blood. Sometimes Dewey came tearing out of the back room like someone had lit a firecracker under his rear end.

Dr. Esterly diagnosed Dewey with constipation. Extreme constipation. “What kind of food does Dewey eat?”

I rolled my eyes. Dewey was well on his way to becoming the world’s worst eater. “He’s very picky. He has a remarkable sense of smell, so he can tell when the food is old or off in some way. Cat food isn’t the highest quality, you know. It’s just a bunch of leftover animal parts. So you can’t blame him.”

Dr. Esterly looked at me like a kindergarten teacher eyeing a parent who had just explained away her child’s disruptive behavior. Overindulgent, are we?

“He always eats canned food?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Does he drink much water?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“The cat avoids his water dish like poison.”

“More water,” Dr. Esterly assured me. “That should clear up the problem.”

Thanks, Doc, nothing to it. Except have you ever tried to get a cat to drink water against his will? It’s impossible.

I started with gentle coaxing. Dewey turned away in disgust.

I tried bribery. “No food until you drink some water. Don’t look at me like that. I can last longer than you can.” But I couldn’t. I always gave in.

I started petting Dewey as he ate. Slowly the petting turned to pushing. “If I force his head down into the water,” I thought, “he has to drink.” Needless to say, that plan didn’t work.

Maybe it was the water. We tried warm water. We tried cold water. We tried refreshing the water every five minutes. We tried different faucets. This was the mid-1990s, so there was no such thing as bottled water, at least not in Spencer, Iowa. We tried putting ice in the water dish. Everyone likes ice water, right? Actually, the ice worked. Dewey took a lick. But otherwise, nothing. How could an animal stay alive without water?

A few weeks later I rounded the corner into the staff bathroom and there was Dewey, on the toilet, his head completely buried in the bowl. All I could see was his rear end sticking straight up in the air. Toilet water! You sneaky son of a gun.

“Well,” I thought, “at least he isn’t going to die of dehydration.”

The door was left open when the staff bathroom was unoccupied, so that toilet was Dewey’s primary water source. But he also loved the women’s bathroom in the front of the library. Joy DeWall was the library clerk who spent the most time shelving books. Dewey would watch her loading books onto the book cart, then hop on for a ride once it was full. He would stare at the bookshelves as the cart rolled past, and whenever he saw something he liked, he’d signal Joy that he wanted to get off, like he was riding a little cat trolley. He knew she was a soft touch, so he always begged her to let him into that bathroom. Once inside the sanctum, he jumped on the sink and begged for the water to be turned on. He didn’t drink this water. He watched it. Something about the way it bounced off the drain plug fascinated him. He could watch that water for an hour, occasionally taking a quick slap at it with his paw.

But that didn’t help his constipation, and neither did trips to his royal porcelain bowl. Whether he watched water or drank it, Dewey still couldn’t go. When it got really bad, Dewey tended to hide. One morning, poor Sharon Joy reached into the top drawer of the circulation desk for a tissue, but instead grabbed a handful of hair. She literally fell out of her chair.

“How did he get in there?” she asked, staring down at Dewey’s back. His head and rear were completely buried in the drawer.

Good question. The drawer hadn’t been opened all morning, so Dewey must have climbed in during the night. I poked around under the desk. Sure enough, there was a small opening behind the drawers. But this was the top drawer, more than three feet off the ground. Mr. Rubber Spine had wiggled his way to the top of the crevice and turned a tight corner, all to curl up in a space of no more than a few inches.

I tried to rouse him, but Dewey shrugged me off and didn’t move. This wasn’t like him at all. Obviously something was wrong.

As I suspected, Dewey was constipated. Extremely constipated. Again. This time, Dr. Esterly performed a thorough exam, with lots of deep poking and prodding of Dewey’s sensitive belly. Oh, it was painful to watch. This was definitely the end of the cat-doctor relationship.

“Dewey has megacolon.”

“You’re going to have to walk me through that, Doctor.”

“Dewey’s colon is distended. This causes his intestinal contents to pool inside his body cavity.”

Silence.

“Dewey’s colon is permanently stretched out. This allows it to store more waste. By the time Dewy tries to get rid of it, the opening to the outside world is too small.”

“A little extra water isn’t going to solve the problem, is it?”

“I’m afraid there’s no cure. The condition is rare.” In fact, they weren’t even sure of the cause. Apparently, distended feline colons were not a top research priority.

If Dewey had lived in the alley, his megacolon would have shortened his life. In a controlled environment like the library, I could expect periodic but severe bouts of constipation, accompanied by very picky eating. When the plumbing tends to back up, cats get awfully choosy about what they put in the system. See, I told you he had a disease.

Dr. Esterly suggested an expensive cat food, the kind you could buy only from a veterinarian. I forget the name, maybe Laboratory Diet, Middle-aged Cat with Bowel Troubles Formula? The bill almost broke the budget. I hated to dish out thirty dollars for something I knew wasn’t going to work.

I told Dr. Esterly, “Dewey’s a picky eater. He’s not going to like this.”

“Put it in his bowl. Don’t give him anything else. He’ll eat it. No cat will starve itself to death.” As I was packing up to leave, he added, as much to himself as to me, “We’re going to have to watch Dewey carefully. There will be ten thousand unhappy people if something happens to him.”

“There will be more people than that, Dr. Esterly. A lot more.”

I put the fancy new food in the bowl. Dewey didn’t eat it. He sniffed it once and walked away.

This food, it’s no good. I want the usual, please.

The next day, he dropped the subtle approach. Instead of sniffing and walking away, he sat down by the food bowl and cried.

Whhhyyyy? What have I done to deserve this?

“Sorry, Dewey. Doctor’s orders.”

After two days, he was weak, but he didn’t waver. He hadn’t even batted the food with his paw. That’s when I realized Dewey was stubborn. Painfully stubborn. He was a mellow cat. He was accommodating. But when it came to an important principle like food, Dewey would never roll over and play dog.

And neither would I. Mom could be stubborn, too.

So Dewey went behind my back to the rest of the staff. First he hit up Sharon by jumping on her desk and rubbing her arm. He had taken to sitting on Sharon’s desk and watching her eat lunch, and she seemed appreciative of a good meal.

When that didn’t work, he tried his old friend Joy, always a soft touch. Then he tried Audrey, Cynthia, Paula, everybody, right down the line. He tried Kay, even though he knew she was the no-nonsense, practical type. Kay had no time for weakness. But I could see even she was beginning to waver. She tried to act tough, but she was developing a real warm spot in her heart for the Dew.

I didn’t care, let them disapprove. I was going to win this round. It might break my heart now, but in the end Dewey would thank me. And besides, I was Mommy, and I said so!

On the fourth day, even the patrons turned on me. “Just feed him, Vicki! He’s so hungry.” Dewey had been shamelessly putting on a starving cat act for his fans, and it had clearly been working.

Finally, on the fifth day, I caved and gave Dewey his favorite can of Fancy Feast. He gobbled it down without even coming up for air.
That’s it
, he said, licking his lips and then stepping to the corner for a long tongue bath of his face and ears.
We all feel better now, don’t we?

That night I went out and bought him an armful of cans. I couldn’t fight anymore. “Better a constipated cat,” I thought, “than a dead one.”

For two months Dewey was happy. I was happy. All was right with the world.

Then Dewey decided he didn’t like Fancy Feast, chunky chicken flavor. He wasn’t going to eat another bite of it. He wanted something new, and make it snappy, thank you very much. I bought a new flavor, something in the moist smelly blob category. Dewey took one sniff and walked away.
Nope, not that one, either.

“You’ll eat it, young man, or no dessert for you.”

At the end of the day, the food was still there, dried out and crusty. What was I supposed to do? The cat was sick! It took five tries, but I found a flavor he liked. It only lasted a few weeks. Then he wanted something new. Oh, brother. I hadn’t just ceded the battlefield; I’d completely lost the war.

By 1997 the situation was completely absurd. How could you not laugh at an entire bookshelf full of cans of cat food? I’m not exaggerating. We kept Dewey’s items on two shelves in the staff area, and one of them was only for food. We had at least five flavors on hand at all times. The Dew had Midwestern taste. His favorite flavors were beef, chunky chicken, beef & liver, and turkey, but you never knew when another flavor would strike his fancy. He hated seafood, but he fell in love with shrimp. For a week. Then he wouldn’t touch it.