outrage

I went last night to a dinner party given by a visiting fellow at Robinson College in Cambridge. As usual at such affairs, I was the youngest person by about half a century, a role I am getting used to in this country, where I am constantly running into my parents’ friends…or friends of their friends…. The dinner was ok except for some retired Canadian professor who seemed to think that everything in academia today was going to the dogs, Cambridge wasn’t the place it used to be, standards were falling, young people were barely literate and so on. This really annoyed me. No doubt for centuries there have been retired professors saying such things, and yet the world stumbles on and people manage to write new books, make inventions, find cures to diseases and solutions to problems…. which would suggest that things are not actually falling apart as completely as such people seem to think. I told the professor that I think my generation has never been better prepared for serious research and I feel lucky to be where I am at this moment in time. She disagreed. Oh well. Of course I realise that things aren’t perfect, universities are under funded and there is much to be improved, but I don’t see the situation as entirely hopeless, far from it. I have opportunities that previous generations, especially previous generations of women couldn’t have dreamed of, and I wouldn’t turn back the clocks for anything…. But this was not actually the source of my great outrage. This of course involves a cat.
I met everyone in the porter’s lodge of Robinson College. As I was approaching the lodge, I saw a very nice, polite, well-groomed cat sitting patiently outside the porter’s door. It was drizzling and there was much shelter from the rain in that area, so of course I opened the door and let the cat enter in front of me. The porter then went berserk and ordered the cat out. But why, I protested, the creature was so polite and well behaved, and besides it was dreary and miserable outside. How could any porter refuse entrance under such circumstances? The porter looked at me with a sneer and informed me that the cat was from Selwyn College, and therefore completely unwelcome at Robinson. I was furious. Cats are not the same as stupid beer swigging undergrads who cant keep their jaws shut. Cats are superior beings who should be allowed complete freedom to move unhindered wherever they please, and they should be offered food and shelter whenever they so desire. A cat cannot BELONG to Selwyn or any other college, because cats do not belong to anyone other than their own furry selves. They cannot and should not be confined by useless and artificial borders that reflect divisions only relevant in the obsessive human mind. To deny a visiting cat from Selwyn the right to enter Robinson is an insult to felines everywhere, and I think such provincial tendencies should be resisted with the full strength of the international feline community!
Cats of the world unite!