Petronius the Arbiter

Petronius the Arbiter, whom Dan Davis calls Pete, is Dan’s tomcat, traveling companion, and an active presence in moments when human plans fail. His independent habits shape the practical details of their life together, while his bond with Dan gives their companionship an unmistakably reciprocal character: Dan arranges for Pete’s comfort, insists on naming him, and takes him into the Long Sleep alongside himself.

Identity and Daily Life

Before the Six Weeks War, Dan and Pete share an old farmhouse in Connecticut. The house has no plumbing, helping keep the rent low, and its former dining room provides the north light Dan wants for his drafting board. Its abundance of exterior doors poses a different problem: Dan counts eleven, then adds a twelfth for Pete. He fits a board into a window in an unused bedroom and cuts a cat-sized opening through it, giving Pete a way in and out without requiring Dan to open a door each time.

The arrangement is affectionate but also comic in scale. Dan reflects that he has spent too much of his life opening doors for cats and calculates that the task has consumed 978 man-centuries since civilization began. The grand, mock-statistical complaint turns a small household accommodation into a running measure of human life organized around feline preference. Pete’s door is not a decorative gesture; it answers a recurring need created by the cat’s independence.

That independence travels with him. At a bar, Pete rides inside Dan’s overnight bag, which Dan leaves unzipped while the cat is inside. When Dan taps the bag and announces that supper is served, Pete pushes it open with his paws, looks around, and raises his forequarters to the edge of the table. Dan pours ginger ale into a saucer for him. Their shared toast to the female race turns the scene into a miniature portrait of their partnership: Dan addresses Pete as a companion, and Pete’s attentive, familiar presence is part of the joke.

Companionship and Long Sleep

Dan’s care for Pete becomes consequential when he seeks preservation through the Long Sleep. The representative questions whether Dan really means to have the animal preserved alive in hypothermia. Dan answers that he wants both of them to take the Long Sleep and objects to the dismissive phrase “that creature,” insisting that the cat’s name is Petronius. The exchange makes explicit what the farmhouse and bar scenes have already shown: Dan regards Pete as a companion whose identity deserves recognition, not as an incidental animal to be left behind.

Dan is also attentive to the practical terms of their shared future. He agrees to pay two custodial fees, but proposes that they occupy the same coffin and argues that Pete should not cost as much as a man. His reasoning mixes affection with a characteristic concern for expense; neither aspect cancels the other. Pete is included in Dan’s plan, and Dan treats their continued togetherness as something worth arranging in advance.

Pete in the Confrontation

Later, Pete’s behavior exposes the emotional extremity of a crisis. He begins wailing, a sound the narration distinguishes from ordinary feline protest: cats do not make it in a fight or from simple displeasure, but in ultimate distress, when circumstances have become unbearable and they have no other recourse. The sound is compared to a banshee and described as almost physically difficult to endure. Miles Gentry reacts by demanding that the cat be removed.

Miles tries to put Pete into a bag, but Pete is wary of being picked up by anyone other than Dan or Ricky. Even Dan would approach him carefully while he was wailing, and the narration emphasizes that Pete would never calmly accept being seized by the scruff. Miles instead grabs him, and Pete answers with claws in Miles’s forearm and teeth in the fleshy part of his left thumb. Miles yelps and drops him.

Belle swings at Pete with a poker. She has the weapon and the strength, but lacks Pete’s skill with it: he ducks beneath her roundhouse swipe and strikes at both her legs with his paws. The scene reverses the assumption that a distressed cat is merely an object for the humans to move. Pete is frightened and handled against his will, yet he can defend himself and alter the confrontation through his own actions.

Narrative Significance

Pete’s characterization develops through recurring acts of accommodation and refusal. Dan builds him a separate door, feeds him at the table, carries him in an overnight bag, and insists on his proper name when a human institution reduces him to “that creature.” In turn, Pete is not simply passive or grateful: he opens the bag himself, accepts care on familiar terms, resists unwanted handling, and fights back when seized. Their bond is shown through practical habits rather than abstract declarations.

The contrast between domestic comedy and acute distress gives Pete’s presence additional force. A door cut to fit his whiskers and a saucer of ginger ale establish the intimacy of ordinary life; his wail and the injuries he inflicts reveal what that intimacy means when it is threatened. Across both registers, Pete remains a distinct participant in Dan’s life, and Dan’s decision to take the Long Sleep with him makes their companionship part of the story’s central movement across time.