There is a small heated cave in the kitchen and my human worships it in three-minute rituals.
It carries a bowl to the cave, opens the little door, sets the offering inside, and presses the buttons that sing their four flat notes. Then, and this is the part I cannot forgive, it stands there. Watching. The bowl turns in slow circles behind the glass, going nowhere, an animal chasing its own tail, and my human is transfixed, hunched, absolutely still, giving the machine the exact frozen devotion it should be giving me.
The cave hums. The light inside is the color of nothing. And when the four notes come again my human flinches, every time, as though it did not know its own kitchen would speak.
Then the door opens and out comes warmth. Real warmth, the good kind, a bowl radiant as a sun-patch made portable. This, at last, I understand. This is the only sensible thing that happens in this house. My human blows on it, tests it with a careful finger, guards it close.
So I wait until it sets the warm bowl down to find a spoon.
I place myself between my human and the heat. Not touching it. Simply owning the space around it, loafed and enormous and immovable, the way a queen owns a room she has decided to sit in. My human says my name in the low warning voice. I close my eyes.
The bowl cools. It always does. Everything the machine makes hot goes cold again, which is why it must be worshipped daily, over and over, forever.
I am warm the entire time.
I did not press a single button.