Dewey (21 page)

Unfortunately Dewey was still constipated, so on Dr. Esterly’s orders I copied a page out of a calendar and hung it on the wall. Every time someone found a present in Dewey’s litter box, they marked the date. The calendar was known throughout the office as Dewey’s Poop Chart.

I can only imagine what someone like Sharon thought. She was very funny, and she loved Dewey, but she was also fastidious. Now we were discussing poop on a regular basis. She must have thought I was nuts. But she marked that chart, and she never complained. Of course, Dewey only pooped a couple times a week, so we weren’t exactly wearing down the nibs of our pens.

When Dewey hadn’t gone for three days, we locked him in the back closet for a romantic date with his litter. Dewey hated being locked anywhere, especially a closet. I hated it almost as much as Dewey, especially in the winter because the closet was unheated.

“It’s for your own good, Dew.”

After a half hour, I let him out. If no evidence turned up in the litter box, I gave him an hour to roam and then locked him in for another half hour. No poop, back in the box. Three times was the limit. After three times, he wasn’t holding out, he really couldn’t go.

This strategy completely backfired. Dewey soon became so pampered he refused to use the bathroom unless someone took him to the box. He stopped going completely at night, which meant first thing in the morning I had to carry him—yes, carry him—to his litter. Talk about being the king!

I know, I know. I was a sucker. A spoiler of cats. But what could I do? I knew how bad Dewey felt. Not just because I had a connection with him, but because I was no stranger to lifelong illness. I’d been in and out of the hospital more times than most doctors. I’d been medevaced to Sioux Falls twice. And I had been through the Mayo Clinic for irritable bowel syndrome, hyperthyroidism, severe migraines, and Graves’ disease, among others. At one point I had hives on my legs for two years. It turned out I was allergic to the prayer kneeler at church. A year later I suddenly froze. I couldn’t move for half an hour. The staff had to carry me to a car, drive me home, and lay me out in bed. It happened again at a wedding. I had a forkful of wedding cake halfway to my mouth and I couldn’t put my arm down. I couldn’t even move my tongue to tell anyone. Thank God my friend Faith was there. The cause turned out to be a sudden, severe drop in blood pressure exacerbated by one of my medications.

But worst, by far, were the lumps in my breasts. Even now, I don’t feel entirely comfortable talking about it. I’ve shared this experience with very few people, and it’s difficult to break that silence. I don’t want anyone to look at me as less than a complete woman or, even worse, some kind of fraud.

Of all the things in my life—the alcoholic husband, the welfare, the surprise hysterectomy—my double mastectomy was by far the hardest. The worst part wasn’t the procedure, although it was probably the most physically painful thing I’ve ever endured. The worst part was the decision. I agonized over it for more than a year. I traveled to Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and Omaha, more than three hours away, to consult physicians, but I couldn’t make up my mind.

Mom and Dad encouraged me to have the procedure. They said, “You have to do it. You have to get healthy. Your life is at stake.”

I talked to my friends, who had helped me through the end of my marriage and so many problems since, but for the first time they didn’t talk back. They couldn’t deal with it, they admitted later. Breast cancer hit too close to the bone.

I needed to have the surgery. I knew that. If I didn’t, it was only a matter of time before I heard the word
cancer
. But I was a single woman. I dated fairly regularly, if not particularly successfully. My friend Bonnie and I still laugh about the Cowboy, whom I met at a dance in West Okoboji. We met up in Sioux City, and he took me to one of those country places with sawdust on the floor. I can’t tell you about the food because a fight broke out, someone pulled a knife, and I spent twenty minutes huddled in the women’s bathroom. The Cowboy graciously took me back to his house and showed me—I kid you not—how to make bullets. On the way back, he drove me through the stockyards. He found it romantic to see the holding pens in the moonlight.

And yet despite the flops, I still hoped for the right man. I didn’t want that hope to die. But who could love me without my breasts? It wasn’t losing my sexuality I was worried about. It was losing my femininity, my identity as a woman, my self-image. My parents didn’t understand; my friends were too scared to help. What could I do?

One morning there was a knock on my office door. It was a woman I had never met. She came in, closed the door, and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m a patient of Dr. Kolegraff’s. He sent me to see you. Five years ago, I had a double mastectomy.”

We talked for two hours. I don’t remember her name, and I haven’t seen her since (she wasn’t from Spencer), but I remember every word. We talked about everything—the pain, the procedure, the recovery, but mostly the emotions. Did she still feel like a woman? Was she still herself? What did she see when she looked in the mirror?

When she left, I not only knew the right decision, I was ready to make it.

The double mastectomy was a multistep process. First, they took my breasts. Then they installed temporary implants called expanders. I had ports under my arms—literally tubes that stuck out from my flesh—and every two weeks I received a saline injection to expand the size of my chest and stretch the skin. Unfortunately the dangers of silicone implants exploded into the news during my first weeks of recovery, and the FDA placed a temporary ban on new implants. I ended up keeping my four-week temporary expanders for eight months. I had so much scar tissue under my armpits that I got shooting pains down my sides whenever the barometric pressure changed. For years, Joy asked me every time she saw a dark cloud, “Vicki, is it going to rain?”

“Yes,” I’d say, “but not for another thirty minutes.” I could tell when the rain was coming to within ten minutes just by the level of pain. Once it reached crippling, the rain was almost here. Joy and I would laugh, because I was almost always right, but I really just wanted to sit down, right where I was, and cry.

Nobody knew my pain: not my parents, my friends, or my staff. The doctor dug inside my body and scraped out every ounce of flesh he could find. That hollow, sore, scraped-out feeling was always with me, every minute, but sometimes the pain would wash over me so suddenly and so savagely that I would drop to the floor. I was out of the library, on and off, for most of a year. Many of the days I struggled to my desk I knew I shouldn’t have been there at all. With Kay in charge, the library could run without me, but I wasn’t sure I could run without it. The routine. The company. The feeling of accomplishment. And most of all, Dewey.

Whenever I had needed him in the past, Dewey had always been by my side. He had perched on my computer when I thought life might overwhelm me, and he had sat beside me on the sofa and waited for Jodi to spend time with us. Now he moved from sitting beside me to climbing up, one paw at a time, and sitting on my lap. He stopped walking beside me and started insisting on climbing into my arms. That might seem like a small thing, but it made all the difference to me because, you see, I didn’t have anybody to touch. There was a distance between me and the world, and there was no one to hug me, to tell me it was going to be okay. It wasn’t just the surgery. For two years, while I agonized over my decision, mourned my loss, and endured the physical pain, Dewey touched me every day. He sat on me. He snuggled in my arms. And when it was over, when I was finally back to something resembling my normal self, he went right back to sitting at my side. Nobody understood what I was going through for those two years; nobody, that is, but Dewey. He seemed to understand that love was constant, but that it could be raised to a higher level when it really mattered.

Every morning since his first week in the library, Dewey had waited for me at the front door. He would stare at me as I approached, then turn and run for his food bowl when I opened the door. Then, on one of the worst mornings of that terrible two years, he started waving. Yes, waving. I stopped and looked at him. He stopped and looked at me, then started waving again.

It happened the next morning, too. And the next. And the next, until finally I understood this was our new routine. For the rest of his life, as soon as Dewey saw my car pull into the parking lot, he started scratching his right paw on the front door. The wave continued as I crossed the street and approached the door. It wasn’t frantic. He wasn’t meowing or pacing. He was sitting very still and waving at me, as if welcoming me to the library and, at the same time, reminding me he was there. As if I could ever forget. Every morning, Dewey waving at me as I walked toward the library made me feel better: about the job, about life, about myself. If Dewey was waving, everything was all right.

“Good morning, Dewey,” I would say, my heart singing and the library bursting with life, even on the darkest and coldest mornings. I would look down at him and smile. He would rub against my ankle. My buddy. My boy. Then I would cradle him in my arms and carry him to his litter box. How could I deny him that?

Chapter 20

Dewey’s New Friends

O
n the afternoon of June 7, 1999, I received a phone call from a Dewey fan. “Vicki, turn on the radio. You’re not going to believe this.”

I turned it on to hear “and now you know . . . the rest of the story.”

Anyone raised on radio knows that sign-off. Paul Harvey’s
The Rest of the Story
is one of the most popular programs in the history of radio. Each broadcast relates a minor but telling incident in the life of a well-known person. The gimmick is that you don’t know whom Paul Harvey is talking about until his famous closing.

“And that little boy,” he might say, “the one who so wanted to cut down that cherry tree, grew up to be none other than George Washington, the father of our country. And now you know . . . the rest of the story.”

Now Paul Harvey was telling the story of a cat who inspired a town and became famous around the world . . . and it all started in a library book drop on a cold January morning in a small Iowa town. And now you know . . .

Who cares if nobody from Paul Harvey’s staff called to check the facts? Who cares if they didn’t know 10 percent of the rest of the story, the part that made Dewey so special? I sat down at the end of the broadcast and thought, “That’s it. Dewey’s really made it now.” And then, because I was so used to the unexpected with Dewey, I wondered what was going to happen next.

For years I had gone to the newspaper and the radio station to pass on Dewey news. With Paul Harvey, I decided to hold back. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of Dewey fans. Patrons asked every day for the latest bit of Dewey news. Children ran into the library, eager and smiling, looking for their friend. But good news about Dewey no longer seemed to impress the rest of the town. In fact, I was beginning to worry it was pushing some people away. Dewey, I suspected, might be a little overexposed.

But only in Spencer. The rest of the world still couldn’t get enough. In addition to being on several state boards, I was one of six continuing-education instructors in the Iowa library system. I taught the courses using the Iowa Communication Network (ICN), a teleconferencing system connecting libraries, military depots, hospitals, and schools around the state. Every time I sat down in our ICN room to teach the opening class of a course, the first question was, “Where’s Dewey?”

“Yes,” another librarian would pipe up, “can we see him?”

Fortunately, Dewey attended all meetings in the ICN room. He preferred meetings of actual people, but teleconferences were acceptable, too. I put Dewey on the table and pushed a button so he appeared on viewing screens all over the state. You could probably hear the gasp in Nebraska.

“He’s so cute.”

“Do you think my library should get a cat?”

“Only if it’s the right cat.” That’s what I always told them. “You can’t get just any cat. He has to be special.”

“Special?”

“Calm, patient, dignified, intelligent, and above all, outgoing. A library cat has to love people. It also helps if he’s gorgeous and comes with an unforgettable story.” I didn’t mention loving, absolutely loving with his whole heart, being the library cat.

“Okay,” I told them eventually. “Enough fun. Back to censorship and collection development.”

“One more minute. Please. I want my staff to meet Dewey.”

I looked over at my big orange buddy, who was sprawled out in his favorite spot on the table. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

He gave me an innocent look.
Who, me? I’m just doing my job.

It wasn’t just librarians who loved Dewey. I was working in my office one morning when Kay called me to the front desk. Standing there was a family of four, two young parents and their children.

“This nice family,” Kay said, with barely disguised amazement, “is from Rhode Island. They’ve come to meet Dewey.”