My human has provided me a boat.
It is woven, oval, cool against the belly, and it holds the exact shape of me when I lower myself into it, which tells me it was measured to my dimensions while I slept. The walls rise just high enough that I can see out but nothing can see in. A watchtower. A throne with drainage.
For reasons I do not investigate, the human fills it, periodically, with warm cloth. Cloth that smells of the human at its most honest: the sweat, the sleep, the day it had. It gathers this evidence into my boat and then, baffling, tries to carry it away from me. As though the softest, most human-scented pile in the entire territory belongs anywhere but under me.
I do not permit this.
I board while the cloth is still warm. I sink. I become the center of gravity. The human returns, sees me installed at the heart of its little project, and makes the noise it makes when it has lost, which is the noise it pretends is affection.
It could lift me out. It has hands for exactly that. Instead it stands there, arms slack, and says my name in the soft voice, negotiating with a landlord.
I let one paw drape over the rim. I close my eyes.
The cloth will wait. The human will wait. I was here first, technically, because everything was here first once I decided it was mine.