Pete was another matter, and it I had not been in love I would have seen it as a clear sign that Belle and I would never understand each other. Belle "liked" my eat-oh, sure, sure! She adored cats and she loved my incipient bald spot and admired my choice in restaurants and she liked everything about me.
But liking cats is hard to fake to a cat person. There are cat people and there are others, more than a majority probably, who "cannot abide a harmless, necessary eat." If they try to pretend, out of politeness or any reason, it shows, because they don't understand how to treat eats-and cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy.
It is based on self-respect and mutual respect and it has the same flavor as the dignidad de hombre of Latin America which you may offend only at risk to your life.
Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. If somebody asked me why it was worth anyone's time to cater to them I would be forced to answer that there is no logical reason. I would rather explain to someone who detests sharp cheeses why he "ought to like" Limburger. Nevertheless, I fully sympathize with the mandarin who cut off a priceless embroidered sleeve because a kitten was sleeping on it.
Belle tried to show that she "liked" Pete by treating him like a dog... so she got scratched. Then, being a sensible cat, he got out in a hurry and stayed out a long time-which was well, as I would have smacked him, and Pete has never been smacked, not by me. Hitting a eat is worse than useless; a cat can be disciplined only by patience, never by blows.
So I put iodine on Belle's scratches, then tried to explain what she had done wrong. "I'm sorry it happened: I'm terribly sorry! But it will happen again if you do that again!"
"But I was just petting him!"
"Uh, yes ... but you weren't cat-petting him; you were dogpetting him. You must never pat a eat, you stroke it. You must never make sudden movements in range of its claws. You must never touch it without giving it a chance to see that you are about to... and you must always watch to see that it likes it. If it doesn't want to be petted, it will put up with a little out of politeness-eats are very polite-but you can tell if it is merely enduring it and stop before its patience is exhausted." I hesitated. "You don't like cats, do you?"
`What? Why, how silly! Of course I like cats." But she added, "I haven't been around them much, I suppose. She's pretty touchy, isn't she?"
"`He.' Pete is a he-male cat. No, actually he's not touchy, since he's always been well treated. But you do have to learn how to behave with cats. Uh, you must never laugh at them."
"What? Forevermore, why?"
"Not because they aren't funny; they're extremely comical. But they have no sense of humor and it offends them. Oh, a cat won't scratch you for laughing; he'll simply stalk off and you'll have trouble making friends with him. But it's not too important. Knowing how to pick up a cat is much more important. When Pete comes back in I'll show you how."
But Pete didn't come back in, not then, and I never showed her. Belle didn't touch him after that. She spoke to him and acted as if she liked him, but she kept her distance and he kept his. I put it out of my mind; I couldn't let so trivial a thing make me doubt the woman who was more to me than anything in life.
But the subject of Pete almost reached a crisis later. Belle and I were discussing where we were going to live. She still wouldn't set the date, but we spent a lot of time on such details. I wanted a ranchette near the plant; she favored a flat in town until we could afford a Bel-Air estate.
I said, "Darling, it's not practical; I've got to be near the plant. Besides, did you ever try to take care of a tomcat in a city apartment?"
"Oh, that! Look, darling, I'm glad you mentioned it. I've been studying up on cats, I really have. We'll have him altered. Then he'll be much gentler and perfectly happy in a flat."
I stared at her, unable to believe my ears. Make a eunuch of that old warrior? Change him into a fireside decoration? "Bell; you don't know what you're saying!"
She tut-tutted me with the old familiar "Mother knows best," giving the stock arguments of people who mistake cats for property... how it wouldn't hurt him, that it was really for his own good, how she knew how much I valued him and she would never think of depriving me of him, how it was really very simple and quite safe and better for everybody.
I cut in on her. "Why don't you arrange it for both of us?"
"What, dear?"
"Me, too. I'd be much more docile and I'd stay home nights and I'd never argue with you. As you pointed out, it doesn't hurt and I'd probably be a lot happier."
She turned red. "You're being preposterous."
"So are you!"
She never mentioned it again. Belle never let a difference of opinion degenerate into a row; she shut up and bided her time. But she never gave up, either. In some ways she had a lot of cat in her... which may have been why I couldn't resist her.
I was glad to drop the matter. I was up to here in Flexible Frank. Willie and Hired Girl were bound to make us lots of money, but I had a bee in my bonnet about the perfect, all-work household automaton, the general-purpose servant. All right, call it a robot, though that is a much-abused word and I had no notion of building a mechanical man.
I wanted a gadget which could do anything inside the home-cleaning and cooking, of course, but also really hard jobs, like changing a baby's diaper, or replacing a typewriter ribbon. Instead of a stable of Hired Girls and Window Willies and Nursemaid Nans and Houseboy Harries and Gardener Guses I wanted a man and wife to be able to buy one machine for, oh, say about the price of a good automobile, which would be the equal of the Chinese servant you read about but no one in my generation had ever seen.
If I could do that it would be the Second Emancipation Proclamation, freeing women from their age-old slavery. I wanted to abolish the old saw about how "women's work is never done." Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer it offended me.
For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new principles. Basic research is no job for one man alone; this had to be development from former art or I couldn't do it
Fortunately there was an awful lot of former art in engineering and I had not wasted my time while under a "Q" clearance. What I wanted wasn't as complicated as the things a guided missile was required to do.
Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer: any work a human being does around a house. He didn't have to play cards, make love, eat, or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook, make beds, and tend babies-at least he had to keep track of a baby's breathing and call someone if it changed. I decided he did not have to answer telephone calls, as A.T.&T. was already renting a gadget for that. There was no need for him to answer the door either, as most new houses were being equipped with door answerers.
But to do the multitude of things I wanted him to do, he had to have hands, eyes, ears, and a brain... a good enough brain.
Hands I could order from the atomics-engineering equipment companies who supplied Hired Girl's hands, only this time I would want the best, with wide-range servos and with the delicate feedback required for microanalysis manipulations and for weighing radioactive isotopes. The same companies could supply eyes-only they could be simpler, since Frank would not have to see and manipulate from behind yards of concrete shielding the way they do in a reactor plant.
The ears I could buy from any of a dozen radio-TV houses-though I might have to do some circuit designing to have his hands controlled simultaneously by sight, sound, and touch feedback the way the human hand is controlled.