Cats

Cats in The Door into Summer are not merely household ornaments or convenient symbols: they are demanding, self-possessed companions whose preferences impose real obligations on the people who care for them. Petronius the Arbiter’s insistence on choosing his own routes, his refusal to accept winter weather, and his close attachment to Dan Davis make feline independence both a source of comedy and a measure of human loyalty.

Identity and Domestic Life

Before the Six Weeks War, Dan and his tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter—usually called Pete—lived together in an old farmhouse in Connecticut. The house had no plumbing, keeping the rent low, and its former dining room offered good north light for Dan’s drafting board. It also had eleven exterior doors, a number that effectively grew to twelve when Dan counted Pete’s own entrance: a board fitted into a window in an unused bedroom, with a cat-sized opening cut through it.

Dan had made that entrance to spare himself the repeated chore of opening doors. He joked that people had spent 978 man-centuries opening doors for cats since civilization began, but Pete did not treat the arrangement as a convenience to be used without exception. He usually went through his own door; when he could persuade Dan to open a people door, however, he preferred that. The distinction gives Pete a small but unmistakable sphere of choice within a human-managed household.

A Cat’s Philosophy of Weather

Pete’s understanding of their arrangement was clear from kittenhood: Dan was responsible for quarters, food, and weather, while Pete was responsible for everything else. He held Dan especially accountable for the weather. When snow covered the ground, Pete would inspect his own door and decline to go out into the white stuff, then demand that Dan try the people doors instead.

Pete believed that at least one of the eleven must lead into summer. Dan therefore had to escort him from door to door, hold each one open, and let him discover that winter lay beyond that one too. With every disappointment, Pete’s criticism of Dan’s management grew sharper. He would remain inside until he could no longer avoid going out; when he returned, ice in his paws clicked against the wooden floor. He would glare at Dan and refuse to purr until he had chewed the ice away, then forgive him until the next bout of weather. The ritual turns an ordinary inconvenience into an ongoing contest between a cat’s expectations and a human being’s inability to control the season.

Pete never abandoned his search for the Door into Summer. On December 3, 1970, Dan was searching for it too, though his winter was not a matter of snow. In Los Angeles, southern California’s scant snow stayed on the mountains for skiers; Dan’s sense of winter was instead an inward condition. The repeated image joins Pete’s persistent, practical demand for warmth to Dan’s own more difficult longing, without making the cat’s search any less his own.

Attachment and Responsibility

Dan’s connection to Pete is presented as a lasting obligation, not an affection that can be set aside when circumstances change. Dan explains that a cat cannot simply be given away like a dog: a cat may sometimes go with a house, but Pete would not. Since Dan had taken him from his mother nine years earlier, Dan had been the one stable presence in a changing world. He had even managed to keep Pete near him during his Army service, which required considerable effort.

Pete was in good health despite being held together by scar tissue. Dan judged that if Pete could correct his habit of leading with his right, he might win fights and sire kittens for another five years. But the prospect of years ahead sharpened rather than eased Dan’s responsibility. Paying to keep Pete in a kennel until he died was unthinkable to him; so was having him chloroformed. Abandonment remained the other possibility, but Dan describes it as a betrayal that would leave Pete to go wild and destroy his faith in the rightness of the world. The cat’s dependence is not treated as an abstract claim about kindness: it follows from their shared history and from Dan’s recognition that Pete’s trust has consequences.

Cat Etiquette and Human Misunderstanding

The novel treats relations with cats as requiring knowledge, restraint, and respect. Dan argues that a person’s fondness for cats is difficult to fake to someone who knows them, because liking a cat is not the same as understanding how to behave around one. In his account, cats have no sense of humor, possess enormous egos, and are easily offended; there may be no logical reason to cater to them, but their dignity still demands consideration.

Dan’s practical rules make that principle specific. A cat should be stroked rather than patted, approached without sudden movements within claw range, and given the chance to see that contact is coming. People should watch whether the cat welcomes the attention and stop if it is merely tolerating it. Dan also insists that cats must never be laughed at. His comparison of cat protocol with diplomacy emphasizes that courtesy is not optional simply because the other party is an animal.

Belle’s first effort to show affection for Pete exposes the difference between professed fondness and competent attention. She treats him as she would a dog, and Pete scratches her. He then gets away and stays out for a long time. Dan puts iodine on Belle’s scratches and explains what went wrong, while warning that the same result will follow if she repeats the behavior. The incident also shows the cost of disregarding Pete’s signals: Dan says he would have smacked the cat, but Pete had never been struck by him, because hitting a cat is useless and discipline requires patience rather than blows. What looks to Belle like a simple attempt to pet him is, to Pete, an unwelcome approach; the mismatch is resolved not by demanding compliance from the animal but by teaching the human a better way to behave.

Distress and Narrative Significance

Pete’s vocal behavior marks the limits of the household comedy. During the confrontation involving Miles, Pete begins to wail. Dan’s narration distinguishes that sound from ordinary fighting or displeasure: a cat does not wail because it has merely been hurt or annoyed, but only when distress has become unbearable and it has no other recourse. The sound is likened to a banshee and described as nerve-racking; Miles reacts by insisting that the cat must be removed.

The moment makes Pete’s distress legible where his earlier refusals and scratches might be dismissed as difficult temperament. Across the novel, he is allowed preferences and limits that do not simply serve human convenience: he chooses doors, refuses snow, seeks warmth, rejects clumsy handling, and cries out when a situation overwhelms him. Dan’s repeated attention to those signals turns care into a relationship of reciprocal respect. The Door into Summer is therefore also a story about the animal who keeps searching for an inhabitable world—and about the human bond that makes his search matter.