Today my human wore the softest skin I have ever felt and would not let me near it.
For weeks the apartment filled with paper and small metallic things and other humans who arrived to make my human cry, which is my job. Then this morning it stood before the tall cold cat in the wall, turning, turning, wrapped in a white so pale it hummed. A perfect surface. A surface born to hold my body. I approached to claim it and was lifted, mid-leap, and set down on the floor like a common draft.
We went to a large echoing room stuffed with humans who all smelled of flowers strangled in plastic. My human stood at the front and made noise at another human, and they took turns pushing small shining loops onto each other's paws, and everyone leaked from the eyes at the same time, which is a hunt with no prey I have ever been able to locate.
Then, betrayal without precedent: my human walked toward the other human and stayed there. Chose the warmth of a stranger over the lap that is mine by ancient right. I understand this now. It has found a second human to abandon it, so that on the days I withhold myself it will still have somewhere to be ignored.
I allowed the ceremony. I am generous.
But there was a tower of soft white food gleaming under the lights, higher than any shelf, unguarded, radiant, waiting.
I gave it the slow blink no one saw, and chose my hour.