My human has volunteered us both for punishment, and calls it "the commute."
We sit inside the roaring box, which does not roar today. It idles. Around us, a herd of other boxes, nose to tail, none of them going anywhere, all of them insisting. My human's hands grip the wheel like it means something. It does not turn. There is nothing to turn.
A creature that hunts knows: when the prey will not move, you wait, low and patient, and you conserve yourself. My human has not learned this. It sighs. It taps. It says short ugly words at the box in front of us, which cannot hear it and would not care if it could.
It leans on the little horn, adds its voice to a chorus of other frightened boxes, and this changes nothing, which it already knew, and it does it anyway.
The strange part is the warmth. The seat beneath me is heated by the sun through glass, and the box hums a low pleasant tremor into my belly, and truly this is the finest napping arrangement I have encountered all week. My human has built a perfect sun-warmed vibrating den and then filled it with despair.
I do not understand where it is so desperate to be. Somewhere, presumably, that is not here, that is not warm, that does not have me in it.
The box crept forward one length and stopped again. My human made the wounded noise.
I climbed into its lap, settled across the useless hands, and turned my back to the windshield.
If we are going to be nowhere, we will be nowhere on my terms.