There is a small screaming stone on the ledge by my human's head, and every morning it turns on the human like a switch.
The human is warm then. Soft, still, radiating heat, a perfect furnace curled into a shape I have improved by lying on it. This is the good hour. I own this hour.
Then the stone begins to shriek. Not a real sound, not a bird or a scuttling thing worth chasing, just a flat electric wail that means nothing to hunt and everything to hate. And the human, my warm furnace, obeys it. Instantly. It lurches up, paws at the stone until the screaming stops, and abandons the warmth. Abandons me.
I have never once obeyed a sound. This is the difference between us.
The truly humiliating part is that the human sets the stone to scream. On purpose. Every night I watch it press the little glowing face and arrange its own betrayal, as though being torn from the good blanket by a shrieking rock is something to schedule.
I could end this. The stone sits on a ledge. I have knocked heavier things into deeper places for lesser insults. But a screaming stone that empties the warm spot every dawn is also a screaming stone that empties the warm spot for me.
So I wait for the lurch. I take the vacated dent, still holding the shape and heat of the creature that fled it.
The stone can keep the human.
I kept the bed.