The doors and windows were tightly shut, and the cracks of the window frames stuffed with cloth, to keep out the cold. But Black Susan, the cat, came and went as she pleased, day and night, through the swinging door of the cat-hole in the bottom of the front door. She always went very quickly so the door would not catch her tail when it fell shut behind her.
One night when Pa was greasing the traps he watched Black Susan come in, and he said: "There was once a man who had two cats, a big cat and a little cat."
Laura and Mary ran to lean on his knees and hear the rest.
"He had two cats," Pa repeated, "a big cat and a little cat. So he made a big cat-hole in his door for the big cat. And then he made a little cat-hole for the little cat."
There Pa stopped.
"But why couldn't the little cat--" Mary began.
"Because the big cat wouldn't let it," Laura interrupted.
"Laura, that is very rude. You must never interrupt," said Pa.
"But I see," he said, "that either one of you has more sense than the man who cut the two cat-holes in his door."
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
As Boing Boing reminded me to today, the reputed inventor of the cat-door was none other than Sir Issac Newton. But the surprising part was that he, as legend has it anyway, was guilty of the dual-egress: One hole for the cat and the other for her kittens.
I suppose there are a number of ways that it could be true. Maybe Laura was on the right track. After all, I could totally see one of our cats blocking the door to effectively shut out the other. (I'm looking at you, Rollie!) Or if the step on the original full-size door was too high for a kitten, one cut lower to the ground would make a workable--if ugly--hack.
Then, too, we all probably know someone who demonstrates the stereotypical inverse relationship between brilliance and common sense. And let's face it, the man who invented a new branch of mathematics literally overnight (true story) also made the mistake of reinvesting his profits from the South Sea Bubble's boom back into its bust, and lost his shorts.
Alas, the ahem, cromulence of the tale falls short: Both Newton's claim to the invention and subsequent misuse thereof have both been roundly debunked.
Innovation is, of course, driven by many factors other than genius. We owe the discovery of penicillin, for instance, to straight-up carelessness. Or we could subscribe to George Bernard Shaw's "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Or, when we find a door cut into a door for the convenience of felines, it's easy to suspect that the mother of invention is occasionally whiskered.
Now, if Sir Tim Berners-Lee had a cat around when he was inventing the HTTP protocol and thus the World Wide Web (which currently exists as a platform for cat photos/videos), I think we would be justified in our suspicions.
