My human has found a new friend who does not love it back, and I am delighted.
Every visit, it wheels a cart of soft crinkling bags to a small screen that speaks in a bright, flat voice, and my human obeys. It lifts each object, drags it past a little red light, and waits, breath held, to be told it did the thing correctly. It does not always do the thing correctly. The screen barks. "Unexpected item." My human freezes, guilty, hands raised, as if caught eating off the counter.
I know this posture. I invented this posture. I use it every time I am found on the good chair.
Then it looks around for the tall human in the vest, the one who comes with a key and a sigh and touches the screen twice, and the shame lifts, and my human is permitted to continue. Permitted. In its own house of errands, my human must ask permission to leave.
It does all the labor now. The scanning, the bagging, the pleading with the flat bright voice. It has fired the humans who used to do this and taken the job itself, unpaid, in exchange for the honor of standing in a smaller line. It calls this "faster."
The bags it drags home smell of cold plastic and things I am not allowed to have. It sets them on my counter, my counter, the high smooth one where the sun pools in the afternoon.
I wait until it turns to the cupboard. Then I place one paw on the edge of the nearest bag and, without expression, without hurry, send it to the floor.
Unexpected item.