My human pays to sit on a stationary bicycle in a dark room and go nowhere.
I know it goes nowhere because I have watched it leave, and I have watched it return, and it is the same human, no farther away, no closer to anything, damp and thrilled about it. It comes home smelling of forty other humans who were also pedaling toward nothing in the dark. A whole herd, thundering in place, sweating in unison, while one loud human at the front shouts encouragement like a mother bird who has lost her mind.
There is music, apparently. There is a small glowing rectangle on the bicycle that tells the human how hard it is failing to arrive. And there is the noise, the terrible enthusiastic noise, which I can smell on the little rubber acorns it jams in its ears, the ones it will not let me chew.
I have studied movement my entire life. I know the difference between the pounce that ends in a warm mouthful and the pounce that ends in nothing. My human has invented a pounce that never ends and never catches. It calls this discipline. It shows me its legs afterward as if they are a gift.
When it collapses onto the couch, too spent to acknowledge me, I climb onto its heaving chest and settle exactly over the loudest part.
Now something is finally going somewhere. Down. Slowly. Into sleep.
Where I have parked myself, and where it will remain, until I decide the ride is over.