Free Dewey by Vicki Myron Page B

November 18, 1988.
    DEWEY’S LIKES AND DISLIKES
Category
Loves
Hates
Food
Purina Special Dinners, Dairy Flavor!
Anything else
Place to sleep
Any box or someone’s lap
Alone or in his own basket
Toy
Anything with catnip
Toys that don’t move
Time of day
8 a.m. when the staff arrives
When everybody leaves
Body position
Stretched out on his back
Standing up for very long
Temperature
Warm, warm, warm
Cold, cold, cold
Hiding place
Between the Westerns on the bottom shelf
The lobby
Activity
Making new friends, watching the copier
Going to the vet
Petting
On the head, behind his ears
Scratched or touched on stomach
Equipment
Kim’s typewriter, the copier
Vacuum cleaner
Animal
Himself!
Grooming
Cleaning his ears
Being brushed or combed
Medicine
Felaxin (for hair balls)
Anything else
Game
Hide-and-seek, push the pen on the floor
Wrestling
People
Almost everyone
People who are mean to him
Noise
A snack being opened, paper rustling
Loud trucks, construction, dogs barking
Book
The Cat Who Would Be King
101 Uses for a Dead Cat

Chapter 9
    Dewey and Jodi

    T he relationship between Dewey and Crystal is important not just because it changed her life but because it illustrates something about Dewey. It shows his effect on people. His love. His understanding. The extent to which he cared. Take this one person, I’m saying every time I tell that story, multiply it by a thousand, and you’ll begin to see how much Dewey meant to the town of Spencer. It wasn’t everybody, but it was another person every day, one heart at a time. And one of those people, one very close to my own heart, was my daughter, Jodi.
    I was a single mother, so when she was young Jodi and I were inseparable. We walked our cockapoo Brandy. We went window-shopping at the mall. We had sleepovers in the living room, just the two of us. Whenever a movie came on television we wanted to see, we had a picnic on the floor.
The Wizard of Oz
—over the rainbow where everything is in color and you have the power to do what you’ve always wanted and that power has always been with you if only you knew how to tap into it—came on once a year, and it was our favorite. When Jodi was nine, we went every afternoon, weather permitting, to hike in a nearby wilderness area. At least once a week, we hiked all the way to the top of a limestone cliff, where we sat and looked down on the river, a mother and her daughter, talking together.
    We lived in Mankato, Minnesota, but we spent a lot of time at my parents’ house in Hartley, Iowa. For two hours, as the cornfields of Minnesota turned into the cornfields of Iowa, we sang along to the old eight-track, mostly corny 1970s songs by John Denver and Barry Manilow. And we always played a special game. I would say, “Who’s the biggest man you know?”
    Jodi would answer, and then ask me, “Who’s the strongest woman you know?”
    I would answer and ask, “Who’s the funniest woman you know?”
    We asked questions back and forth until eventually I could think of only one more question, the one I had been waiting to ask. “Who’s the smartest woman you know?”
    Jodi always answered, “You, Mommy.” She had no idea how much I looked forward to hearing that.
    Then Jodi turned ten. At ten, Jodi stopped answering the question. This behavior was typical of a girl that age, but I couldn’t help being disappointed.
    At thirteen, after we had moved to Spencer, she stopped letting me kiss her good night. “I’m too old for that, Mommy,” she said one night.
    “I know,” I told her. “You’re a big girl now.” But it broke my heart.
    I remember walking out into the living room of our two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot bungalow, which was only a mile from the library. Of course, half of Spencer was only a mile from the library. I looked out the window at the quiet, square houses on their nice square lawns. As in the rest of Iowa, most of the roads in Spencer were perfectly straight. Why wasn’t life like that?
    Brandy tottered up and