My human carried me here in the little plastic cave with the metal door, the one it only produces when something unforgivable is about to happen. I let it think the cave was winning.
Now we sit. The room smells of every animal that has ever been afraid in it, layered like the good blanket after a long week, except none of the fear is mine. My human's is. I can smell it coming off the wrists, that thin sour bloom under the hand that keeps reaching into the cave to touch my back, over and over, as if by touching me it can keep me. As if I were going anywhere.
It has stopped staring at its glowing rectangle. This is significant. The rectangle steals the lap for whole evenings, ignores my most pointed sitting, wins every contest between us, and today my human simply set it face down on its knee and forgot it. For me. It thinks it is comforting me. It is comforting me the way a dropped crumb comforts a lion.
The other humans in the room hold their own trembling animals and murmur to them in the soft voice, the one that means nothing bad will happen while it is quietly happening.
I could reassure my human. One slow blink would do it, would smooth the whole worried face like a paw over an ear.
I look instead at the wall.
Let it work for it.