My human has stopped going to the far place, and this ought to be the finest news of my life.
For as long as I have owned it, the mornings ran the same: the human rose, made itself smell like a stranger, and abandoned me for the whole bright part of the day. An unforgivable ritual. And now, suddenly, it is home. Home in the daylight. Available for warming.
So why does it sit on the good couch and leak.
It came through the door with a box, which pleased me, boxes being the only honest gift a human has ever produced. But the box smelled of other hands, other rooms, a dozen scents I do not recognize and did not approve. It held a plant that will die, a cracked cup, a small framed square of faces. It kept touching the square. It kept looking at the door as though the door might explain something.
I did what I always do to a distracted human. I climbed into the emptied box and made it mine. I expected a laugh, the little pleased chirp it makes when I am charming.
Nothing. It just watched me sit in the box and its eyes went wet and it said a name that was not my name.
I do not care for the person on the other side of that name. I have never smelled them and I never will. But I understand being loved by my human and then, one grey afternoon, left. I understand a door that stops opening.
So I stepped out of the box. I crossed the whole cold length of the couch, which I do for no one, and I lay along the human's leg with all my weight.
Not comfort. My leg was cold.
That is all.