My human has trapped itself inside the moving-box on purpose, and now the box has stopped moving, and this, apparently, is a tragedy.
We have been sitting for a long time. Not a good sitting. The engine growls low and warm beneath us, a heat I would ordinarily approve of, but my human refuses to appreciate it. It grips the round thing. It leans forward to glare at the box ahead, which glares at the box ahead of it, a long red string of them stretching to the edge of everything, all growling, all still. Hundreds of humans, each in its own box, each having chosen this, each furious about the choice.
My human has begun making a sound I have never heard it make at home. A pressing of the center of the round thing that produces a long flat scream. Other boxes scream back. It accomplishes nothing. The string does not move. My human does this anyway, again, the way I paw at a closed door I know is locked, purely to register a complaint with the universe.
Finally it understands what I have always known.
You do not go where you want to go. You wait, warm and seething, until the world decides. Then you pretend it was your idea.
It slumps. It goes quiet. It stops pressing the scream.
Only then, once it has surrendered completely and its lap has gone soft and defeated, do I step delicately across it, plant myself over the round thing, and lie down where it most needs to see.