My human owns a portrait of a cat that lives inside the wall, and it is furious that I refuse to acknowledge it.
There, in the flat cold surface by the door, another one of me sits. Same tail. Same disinterest. I looked at it precisely once, confirmed it had nothing I wanted, and have never looked again. This drives my human to distraction. It waves. It holds me up to the glass, my legs dangling in the indignity of it, cooing, look, look, that's you, as if I have not already assessed every threat in this house before it finished its morning coffee.
That is not me. That is a shallow, odorless copy with no warmth and no heartbeat, and I will not be tricked into greeting a thing that cannot be sat upon.
But watch what the human does. It stands before the glass in the morning, turning, frowning, pulling at its own face with both hands, searching the copy for something I have never once seen it find. It grooms not for cleanliness but for the approval of a stranger who lives in a wall and never approves. Every day it goes back. Every day the copy withholds.
At least I know better than to want the flat cat to like me.
Tonight the human leaned close to inspect some tragedy near its own eyes, breath fogging the surface, wholly absorbed, wholly certain it was alone with itself.
I crossed the shelf above and pressed one paw against the little glass bottle of scented water it keeps there.
It watched it fall.