Today, being a cat finally pays off for K’ip…for cats have each other’s back, at least in the “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” sort of way, on a world-wide, eon-spanning scale.
Well, admittedly sometimes they just scratch each other reciprocally on pure principle…or without any reason…but, regardless, today K’ip profits from the hard work of an anonymous forebear of eons past. Whoever was the deranged wizard or mentally unstable semi-deity who created that near-impenetrable portal, they obviously had a cat, and that cat wanted out. Now! No, wait…wanted to stay in, after all…wait, out! Now!…no, not now, perhaps later?…wait, let me ponder…okay, definitely out!…
…
…let me back in! Now!!!
Given how it must take even a deranged wizard or mentally unstable semi-deity a considerable amount of time and effort to open and close a door of this level of complexity, it’s easy to see how that cat-flap got installed. Likely, within a few days, if not a few hours, after the creation of the door itself. If it wasn’t the first near-impenetrable door which that unknown deranged wizard or mentally unstable semi-deity created, the cat-flap might even have been a feature from the start, based on earlier experience.
As understandable as the installation of that cat-flap is, one has to admit that it constitutes a very serious weakening of the security concept. >_> As Si’ri points out, there still are some barriers, psychological or otherwise, against anybody availing himself of that sort of entry, but they aren’t quite on the same level of impenetrability* as the door itself. A dwarf might feel it’s against his dignity to crawl through something like that. Especially with an elf watching. Which would, inevitably, lead the elf to refuse to use it, as well. And a half-orc paladin might find that it’s not the easiest of things to crawl through a cat-flap if you’re a mountain of muscles in a full suit of plate. Nevertheless, it’s not only cat-people who are capable and willing to use this sort of access…a hobbit, for example, might do it just as easily. And, really, what good is a door at all, if it can’t keep hobbits** out? >_>
More on Mon…uh, Thursday.
* Yeah, I know, technically speaking penetrable/impenetrable is a binary…
** Nasty hobbitses! We hates them!
My cat would sit IN the doorway, creating a schrodinger state wherein it was neither inside nor outside yet both at the same time.
Yeah, the domestication of cats started out with so much promise, back then in Egypt, but then humanity had to go and invent the door. It’ll probably take a few more millennia before cats manage to wrap their minds around that confusing novelty…