My human has appointed a small screaming box to be its master, and me its witness.
Every morning, in the blue dark, the box begins to shriek from the little table by the bed. It has no fur to grab, no throat to pin. It simply screams, and my human, who ignores me when I sing at the door at four, lunges for it with a devotion I have never once been shown. It presses the box. It goes quiet. It screams again. It presses it again. This continues.
I find this fascinating.
My human, who fancies itself the largest creature in this house, has willingly built a tiny god of noise and set it beside its own sleeping head, and every dawn it grovels. It does not run from the sound. It obeys it. It rises when the box says rise, it stumbles to the warm-water room when the box says so, all before it has remembered to feed me, which is the actual reason mornings exist.
I understand fear. I understand a thing that makes noise until you attend to it. What I do not understand is why my human bought its own tormentor, plugged it in, and thanked it.
Still. I've observed where the box lives, right at the edge of that little table, and I've observed how gravity treats things at the edges of tables.
Tonight, while it sleeps, I will sit beside its screaming god. I will consider it. And with one slow, unhurried paw, I will teach it what happens to anything in this house that wakes my human before I say so.