Dolly and I were standing at the french doors looking out at the back garden, watching a steady rain puddling on the quagmire that’s left now that most of the grass has died. We did quite a lot of that today.
“Oh, Dolly,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it stopped raining just for a while?”
“Mraaaw.”
“No, we’re not going out in that again. You’ve had your fifteen minutes this morning.”
“Mraaaw.”
“No. What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”
After several more versions and variations of “Mraaw” she gave up and settled on a chair by the window, waiting for the weather to change. I toddled off into the study to think about, possibly, starting on the pile of filing I need to do.
A little while later I heard Graham going into the kitchen, to be subjected to the same “Mraaaw” treatment. He opened the door, Dolly stuck her head out, got splattered with rain drops, pulled back in, swore roundly at Graham and stomped off upstairs, grumbling all the way.
“What is it with that cat?” Graham said as he came into the study bearing coffee. “Does she think it’ll be different weather outside when I open the door rather than you?”
“That’s exactly what she thinks. If only it were true. Not that you’d like it of course.”
“Why ever not?”
“Well, if you knew the secret of the door into summer you’d have Dolly and me going ‘mraaaw’ at you all day to open it.”
“‘Door into Summer’? That’s the title of a book, isn’t it?”
“Something like that. Not an original thought, anyway. Cats and poets have been longing for doors into summer since time began.”
“They didn’t have doors back at the dawn of time.”
“There you, then. Proves it, that does.”
“Proves what?”
“Proves just how clever and wise cats and poets are. After all, you just said they invented doors.”
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