Vicki Myron: Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

I first saw Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World when LibrayThing announced the Early Reviewer books that were available a few months ago. It immediately appealed to me and I requested it but was chosen for a different book instead. I saw it in stores while shopping with my mother before I'd known I wouldn't be receiving it and had to tell her about it right away. Cat lover that she is as well, she took it home that day.

Those of you who've seen the cover know Dewey is an orange tabby and so it sat for a while before either of us would read it. We lost our own sweet blond tabby, Aloof, in March and so each of us had a desire for reading and yet not reading this book. We knew it would come with heart ache.

My mother wasn't half way through reading Dewey when she announced that she wasn't going to allow me to read it because she said it would hurt me too much. She said Dewey shared many of the same characteristics as Loofy. This is a woman who seven months ago held her tears for him away and cried alone to keep me from her pain because she knew mine was great with him being extraordinarily special to me as well. She didn't tell me much from the book at all as she read but eventually announced (SPOILER) that Dewey would die and that it was the biggest reason for her keeping it from me. (END spoiler.)

I waited but as the holidays drew nearer and this was to be the first Christmas without Loofy, I asked for the book one night. I didn't begin reading it until the morning during a free half hour before work. All I got through was one chapter before turning up at work blurry-eyed after clearing away tears.

Dewey remained a very touchy and emotional book for me but many of the tears weren't just for my sadness but for reminders of happy memories of my own sweet tabby. I cried for the little kitten who was abandoned early on (Dewey and Loofy), the cat who had to have the Dewey-Carry (Dewey and Loofy), and the cat who had to be right there in the middle of everything (Dewey and Loofy). Part of my avoiding writing about this book (yes, I avoided it) was as one might guess because of Loofy. I want to read this book again some day and yet it is one of those books that need only be read once because of how it touched me.

(SPOILER.) Like Vicki Myron, I knew my baby's time was limited as the life of all things must be. She knew Dewey's day would come and prepared for it while I was never able to. I could not see a life without Loofy. It seemed the clock should have stopped with his failing heart. I was almost hit by a car the morning after he died on the way to work feeling at the time that I didn't care if it would or not. (END spoiler.) While our dear furry friends are our pets, sometimes they are a great deal more than any non-animal lover could imagine. They are our companions, our children, and our greatest friends. (SPOILER.) I am sorry Dewey's last day was reached but am happy he lived his long and full, something my sweetie did not.

(SPOILER continued.) I can understand why this book was written. It was to share Dewey's story to those who knew part or all of Dewey's life already. It was also to share it with those who never had the pleasure and opportunity of meeting or knowing about him. Further still, it was so Dewey would always have a place on a bookshelf as he did before, not in one but now in many libraries. It also placed him as always before in the lap of a reading human, where he so often slept in the small town library of Spencer, Iowa. (END spoiler.)

I recommend this book not simply to cat lovers, but those of small towns, those fond of books and libraries, and those who are perhaps looking for the beauty of a very special connection between not two beings but between many. Dewey is a book to be cherished not simply about the love for an amazing cat by a small community but for the love of the world at large for him and his own great love for the world.


From the last few photo shots of Loofy taken in February of 2008 while we were on LibraryThing. "Get off the computer and pay more attention to me!"

Wendy Moss: A Mango-Shaped Space

I took a short break from the series I've been shuffling around lately to read Wendy Mass's A Mango-Shaped Space this weekend.

I've been interested in reading The Man Who Tasted Shapes for years. I got very excited when I clicked the link of A Mango-Shaped Space from another LibraryThingers recently added books to read what this book is about to learn it deals with synesthesia as well.

Through my reading I focused on Mia's sense of colors having to do with letters, numbers, words, names, and sounds. A brief excerpt at the top of the backside to the book will tell you this:
"Everyone thinks I named my cat Mango because of his orange eyes, but that's not the case. I named him Mango because the sounds of his purrs and his wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange..."

Mia was eight years old when, in a third grade classroom trying to solve a math problem on the chalkboard, she learned that no one else in her class saw numbers in colors as she did. Ever since then Mia has kept it a secret to herself, not even telling her parents or best friend for fear of the reactions she will get from others who called her a freak for the math incident in third grade. People will find out sometime, right? Mia struggles in school and the day comes that her secret becomes known.

I really enjoyed reading about things taking on colors that are ordinary, or for another word, plain, to many of us. Though this is a work of fiction, it still strongly held my interest. There is so much more to this story than merely colors. My heart reached out to Mia particularly toward the end when, as the back cover of the book will tell you, she looses something very special to her. It's a precious story that left me rather sniffly.

I'm passing my book along to someone else who wants to read it. I want to warn her about things that are to come because it will have a similar affect on her as it did me but I am trying not to.

Mango for the book challenge counter.

49 / 52 books. 94% done!

A Splinched Life

Daemon torn away, I haven't much had the desire to read these last two weeks. I also haven't been able to rid my head of the boy in Lyra's world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials who held onto a dead fish for dear life. So suddenly I lost such a dear one to me as my greatest companion, who was fit as could possibly be. He was everything to me. I was left feeling I could do nothing that I did before. Life moves, though, and all of me was forced to as well but for reading without him beside me.

I cannot imagine reading without his blondish-orange fur in arms reach where I can pet and stroke him as I read. Or the fact that his nose will never again rub my wrists while he tried to steer my attention away from whatever book I would be reading. No more purrs or smiles of satisfaction as I breaked from reading and rubbed his ears. No more walking with him over my shoulder through the house, or of him turning up from no where to sit on my lap when I had been feeling sad.

He will not test any new bookshelves nor jump around in them with his sister who is so lonely without him. Always they had been a set to mind, like ying and yang perhaps. There could never be one without the other. No Aloft without Aloof. They were a pair, and how could one be complete without the other? The balance would not exist. Aloft is feeling the splinching of her other half.

Half of me is also missing these last couple weeks and I won't get it back. Nothing can change it, though, so I either have to read and probably sob doing so for the first few attempts or not read at all. I miss books, I really do. Nothing like I miss him, of course.

I couldn't make sense of it but I see there are differnces, though why I had to loose him for those differences are so very nastily cruel. I am not a religious person, but I feel the need to scream and kick and shout and beat the damn freaking you-know-what out of someone. I want my baby back. He is gone, forever. Why did this have to happen?!

Still struggling to care enough to turn the front cover of a book and read.

A Book about Cats

This book had a few problems on LibaryThing. For some reason I couldn't catalog it, so it had to be entered manually. I started reading it a few weeks ago. I thought I'd lost it amongst my books but found it the other day under a fake sleeping cat, no joke.

#33 Feline Friends: A Cat Lover's Treasury (December 2007)

This was a birthday present from a friend. I loved looking at all the cats and read the quotes in this book. Pretty much everyone at home wanted to ooh and ahh over it as we're owned by two cats. I put some sticky notes on some of the pages I liked best. Theses are a few of the quotes I liked best:

"The cat was created when the lion sneezed." ~Arabian Proverb

"It's a very inconvient habbit of kittens (Alice had once said) that, whatever you say to kittens, they always purr." ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

"I love cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its visible soul." ~Jean Cocteau

"When I returned home at night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate and would rise and saunter along the walk, as though his being there was purely accidental." ~Charles Dudley Warner

"Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously." ~Louis J. Camuti