My human has brought home a rival, and it cannot even walk.
It sits in a clay pot on the windowsill, in my sun, drinking the light I had already claimed, and my human circles it with a little tin watering can, murmuring, turning its leaves toward the glass so every part of it gets what it wants. I have lived here four years. I have never once been turned toward anything. I turn myself.
It does nothing. This is its whole trick. It does not greet the human at the door, does not warm a lap, does not produce a single sound worth answering. It just stands there being green and vertical, and somehow this earns it a mist of water twice a week and soft words in the voice I thought was mine.
I've watched the human check its soil with one finger, gentle, patient, the way it has never once checked whether I was content. For a stick in dirt.
The leaves smell of nothing. The pot is warm from the afternoon and would make a fine place to sit, except the thing is already sitting there, rooted, smug, taking up my ledge with its slow leafy patience.
I understand now that the human collects things that need it. The plant needs watering. I need nothing, which the human mistakes for me needing nothing, which is its final, fatal error.
So.
I wait until it's watching. I hold its eyes. I place one paw against the warm clay rim, slow, deliberate, a small demonstration of physics, and I let the pot go over the edge.
The soil is everywhere now. The rival lies on its side, roots to the ceiling.
My ledge is warm again, and mine.