Life & Wisdom Quote by Robert A. Heinlein

Protocol, in Heinlein's hands, isn’t a dusty rulebook; it’s a survival skill learned the hard way from a creature that treats etiquette as physics. The cat is a comic prop with sharp teeth: a domestic animal that nonetheless insists on sovereignty. You don’t "own" it so much as negotiate a treaty with it daily. Miss a step - the wrong approach, the wrong timing, the wrong assumption of access - and you get claws. That’s the joke, and it’s also the argument.

Heinlein’s intent is to smuggle a serious point through an offhand punchline: hierarchy and procedure aren’t merely bureaucratic theater. They’re rituals that manage power when power can’t be fully controlled. Cats embody the limits of command. You can’t bully one into affection the way you might try with people or institutions; you have to learn the signals, the boundaries, the implied rules. Protocol becomes less about deference and more about fluency.

The subtext is quietly cynical about human arrogance. We like to imagine we can rationalize systems away, operate on pure intention, skip the formalities. Heinlein replies: try that with a cat and see how far your good vibes get you. The cat stands in for any actor - a nation-state, a bureaucracy, a rival, a lover - that won’t yield to your self-image.

Contextually, it fits Heinlein’s recurring interest in social order, libertarian friction, and the real mechanics of authority: beneath the swagger of individualism sits a world run on negotiated constraints. Cats just make the lesson funnier, and harder to ignore.