My human has brought home a rival and set it in the good window. The best window. The one where the morning sun pools into a warm rectangle I have owned since before this creature drew breath.
It cannot move. It cannot purr. It offers my human nothing, and yet my human touches it more gently than it touches me, tipping water into its dirt, turning its face toward the light, murmuring to it in the soft voice I thought was mine alone. It leans toward the sun exactly as I do, greedy and shameless, but it gets praised for this. I get spritzed with a bottle.
I have investigated. The leaves taste of nothing and punish the mouth. The dirt scatters beautifully when disturbed, a small dark rain across the floor, but even this earns me only a raised voice, while the plant, who did nothing, is comforted afterward.
So it is a decoration my human loves more than a decoration that loves it back. Fine.
I sat with this awhile, in the sun, in the spot, until the plant's shadow fell across my flank like it thought it belonged there.
Tonight, when the house goes quiet, I will pull one long green tongue from the dirt and leave it on the pillow beside my sleeping human's face. Not out of jealousy. A gift.
Proof that I am the only one of us who hunts.