“Aren’t you hot sitting on that heater vent?”
“Alas, summer so fast has passed.”
“Yawn. Fall curls my tail and bristles my fur. Just yesterday you were complaining of the heat and wondering if summer would never end.”
“Shelley was right: ‘We look before and after and pine for what is not.’”
“I once lived in a basement room paneled in knotty pine.”
“I’ll bet it was not when you finished with it.”
“I rebut that. The finish was sprayed shellac. I used to rub against it a good polish.”
“Why can’t cats live without argument?”
“Who says they can’t? Cite your sources if you’re going to talk to me like that.”
“An old cat’s empirical knowledge.”
“Remember that imperialist cat came into our yard?”
“Can facts suffice? Or must cats argue?”
“Argument is a fact of life, a must.”
“How does meaning behave in an argument?”
“Meaning is an alley cat on the prowl and up to no good.”
“Is every text an argument, every argument a trick, every text a test?”
“You ask a lot of hollow questions.”
“I once lived in a hollow.”
“Have you ever been back?”
“Does Theory eschew the behavior of meaning?”
“Go ask a theorist.”
“Do theorists like cats?”
“I suppose some might, but they all want to know how and why we purr.”
“Where do assumptions come from?”
“Assume I don’t know, and wake me up when winter has passed.”
“What a flock of lucky theorists who can fly south for the winter.”
“Have they anything to say to us?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, it’s too hot in the south.”
“It’s going to be too hot in here, too, if you don’t move off that heater vent.”
The Coming of the Toads 