My human has one clay vessel it loves more than it loves me, and it isn't even warm most of the day.
It's the wide one with the chip on the rim and the faded picture worn down to a ghost. Every morning the human fills it with the bitter black water it cannot start moving without, wraps both hands around it, and just holds it. Not drinking. Holding. Pressing its face into the steam with its eyes half shut, making a small contented sound I have only ever heard it make while looking at me. From a cup.
I have studied this rival closely. It cannot purr. It cannot warm a lap or block a doorway or arrive, silent, on a chest at four in the morning. It offers heat and then betrays the human by going cold, sitting there on the desk graying over, a little skin forming on the top, ignored for hours while the human stares at the glowing rectangle. And still, when it's empty, the human washes it by hand. Gently. It puts the others in the loud machine. Not this one.
So it has favorites. So it can choose one dumb object over all the others and guard it and keep it close.
Good.
I hopped onto the desk this morning and sat beside it, and I looked at the human, and I looked at the mug, and I placed one paw very deliberately against its side. The human said my name in that low warning tone, the one that means it already knows.
It hit the floor exactly the way I intended.
There is only room in this house for one thing the human isn't allowed to lose. I've simply reminded it which.