The door into summer

Hilzoy, in the moderate blog Obsidian Wings, on cat behavior:

My cat Nils is not very smart. (Although he wishes me to add that he is a mighty hunter and slayer of mice. Among the phrases he recognizes is: Nils! viscera!) In the past few days he has developed a new and charming addition to his repertoire of not-very-smartnesses. Namely:


My house has two doors: the front door, which leads onto a porch, and the side door, which leads onto steps. I use the side door most of the time, and so does Nils, which is why it's the side door before which he can often be found, staring intently at the handle, trying to move it by sheer force of will. But when it's snowy or rainy, I let him out the front door, so that he will have some shelter while he comes to the conclusion that it would, after all, be better to stay inside.


Until a few days ago, this was easy: Nils would be by the side door, I would open the front door and say 'Nils!', and he would run out. But for the past few days he has refused to go out the front door. It's not that he doesn't want to go out: he will stay beside the side door, staring at it and meowing. But when I open the front door, he will just look at it in a sort of hostile way and then return to wailing to be let out the side door. And the only sense I can make of this is: he won't go out the front door because if he does, then it will be cold and rainy, whereas if he goes out the side door, it will be sunny and warm.

I don't agree with Hilzoy's conclusion that Nils is dumb; in fact, the consensus among my three cats is that this is perfectly sensible and that it's people's damn fault that we can't control the weather anyway.

There's a very similar passage, by the way, in Heinlein's entertaining (though now, sadly, rather dated) "The Door into Summer."