Domestic cat

Pete is the tabby cat whose independent instincts repeatedly alter Dan Davis’s course, most dramatically when he attacks Miles Gentry and Belle. He is at once Dan’s companion and a creature who does not simply obey him: Pete’s urgent attention to his own business delays their reunion, his return makes escape possible, and his habit of trying doors becomes the final, hopeful image of the Door into Summer.

Identity and Character

Pete is presented as a domestic cat with a recognizable temperament rather than as a humanlike sidekick. Dan knows that he should not touch Pete while the cat is still worked up, and waits for his emotions to ease before expecting him to approach. The understanding is practical and intimate: Dan reads the cat’s behavior, but accepts that Pete acts according to his own priorities.

That independence is clearest in the aftermath of the attack. Pete knows Dan is nearby and twice looks toward him, yet continues prowling for an entrance and issuing a deep challenge. Dan interprets the cat’s refusal to come over not as a rejection but as evidence that Pete has “urgent business right now.” Their bond includes familiarity, but it does not cancel the difference between their intentions.

The Attack and Reunion

Pete’s attack on Miles and Belle has lasting force in Dan’s memory. When Belle accuses Dan of having loved Ricky and condemns “that horrible cat,” he feels anger at Pete’s mention, though he tries to suppress it while pressing Belle for information about Ricky. Pete is therefore not merely a pet in this conflict: his presence has become part of the hostility surrounding Dan, Belle, and Ricky.

During Dan’s escape, Pete hits a screen that has failed to follow the schedule. Dan has just freed the cat by cutting through the obstruction with his knife and jumping out of the way. The collision leaves Dan among the bushes; rather than rush to grab Pete, he moves around the side of the house and waits where he can stay clear of the open door and the light spilling from it. The delay reflects his knowledge that a frightened, aroused cat cannot be handled safely on human terms.

Dan calls softly each time Pete passes, inviting him to come. Pete initially keeps to his own patrol. At last, when Dan calls him home, Pete sits down to wash himself; when he looks up, Dan opens his arms and the cat jumps into them. Pete’s return is a reunion on the cat’s timing, not a response to command. Dan carries him to the car, where the available space has been changed by the equipment, and Pete sniffs the hardware in his accustomed place before looking reproachfully at Dan.

Escape and Shared Routine

The journey east toward the Girl Scout camp near Big Bear turns the reunion into a makeshift domestic arrangement. With room only in the driver’s space, Pete has to sit in Dan’s lap. Dan removes enough of Flexible Frank to let Pete resume his rightful place, a small but telling adjustment: even in flight, Dan makes space for the cat’s familiar routine.

The escape also carries a practical cost. Once the floor is clear, Dan stops and pushes his notes and drawings down a storm drain; farther into the mountains, he disposes of the wheelchair chassis in a deep arroyo. Pete’s presence belongs to this sequence of choices not as cargo to be discarded, but as the companion Dan brings onward while abandoning objects that could connect the escape to its previous circumstances.

Aging, Care, and the Door into Summer

Near the novel’s close, Pete is growing older and fatter and is less inclined to choose younger opponents. Dan anticipates that, all too soon, the cat will have to take the Long Sleep. The thought makes the cat’s mortality part of the otherwise confident happiness Dan finds in the present. His hope for Pete’s afterlife is expressed in the cat’s own terms: plentiful catnip, contented tabbies, robot opponents that fight fiercely but always lose, and friendly laps and legs without a kicking foot.

Dan’s care is also practical. He has built Pete an automatic, self-replenishing, sanitary, odorless cat bathroom for bad weather. Pete, however, prefers to go outdoors and has never abandoned his conviction that trying all the doors will eventually reveal the Door into Summer. The device does not replace the cat’s chosen way of living; it is an accommodation Pete is free to ignore.

That persistent search gives the book’s title image an animal dimension. Dan says he has found his own Door into Summer and will not risk time travel again, but Pete keeps testing doors. The difference is characteristic: Dan’s conclusion comes from experience and caution, while Pete’s confidence survives through habit and curiosity. Dan ends by allowing that Pete may be right, leaving the cat’s repeated search not as a puzzle to be solved but as an enduring figure of hope.