My human is practicing being liked at the mirror again.
For three days it has worn the stiff dark plumage it keeps zipped in plastic, the fur that smells of chemicals and other people's closets. It sits at the small glowing rectangle and arranges its face into an expression I have never seen it use on me: eager, upright, grateful. It says its own qualities aloud, over and over, as if reciting the ways it deserves to be fed.
Another human appears in the rectangle. This one does not touch my human, does not even sniff it, simply asks questions from a great electronic distance, and my human answers each one with the desperate warmth of a creature auditioning for a warmer lap.
I have watched this ritual with growing pity. My human is begging. It is offering its whole self, its hours, its mornings, its good posture, to a stranger who has not once considered whether it can be trusted near the good blanket.
I never audition. I arrived, I assessed the sunniest windowsill, and I claimed it. No one interviewed me. No one asks if I am a culture fit for the sofa. The sofa is simply mine now, and the questioning has never come up.
When it finally closes the rectangle, sweating, whispering "I think that went well," it looks to me for confirmation the way it looks to everyone else today.
I hold its gaze.
Then I step onto the plastic plumage laid across the chair, knead it slowly until it wrinkles, and settle in to sleep. It can iron it again. It has, after all, so much to prove.