Leigh has betrayed me.
She returned home Saturday carrying a creature that smells of wet grass, misplaced confidence, and poor decisions. A dog. A puppy, she calls it, as if its smallness excuses the offense.
Black and white, noisy, and wobbly—a knockoff version of my own perfection. I'll grant it that its markings show taste, but imitation is not flattery when it is tracked in on four oversized paws.
Leigh says it came from a "shelter." She says I must be "kind" because he doesn't understand. Understand what, exactly? Territorial sovereignty? Basic respect for silence? The sanctity of my nap schedule?
The thing barked at me. Barked. In my own hall. The audacity nearly unmade me, and had my fur fluffed up!
Leigh scooped it up and looked at me with that pleading face—the same one she wears when she forgets to feed me on time and expects forgiveness. "Be nice," she said, as if my civility could be summoned like some cheap parlor trick.
I watched the puppy stumble across my floor on its ridiculously long legs, sniffing, drooling, and wagging its whip-like tail as if it were a public thoroughfare and not a sacred realm under my eternal watch. Leigh laughed. Laughed!
I have tolerated much in my reign—the vacuum monster, the visiting humans, the occasional indignity of being called "fluffy." But this? This barking blasphemy? Unprecedented.
I am still weighing my options. To destroy it outright would be premature. Leigh's affection clouds her judgement, and I cannot risk her wrath. But should the creature attempt to occupy my sunbeams, my chair, or—stars forbid— my litter box, I will act. Decisively.
For now, I observe. Silent. Regal. Terrifying in my restraint, even if I take the occasional swipe with my claws. I see the way it stumbles everywhere, the way it looks to Leigh for approval. Pitiful. Leigh calls it "sweet." I call it temporary.
Let the record show: I, Writer Cat, Fey God in disguise, Guardian of Stories, Destroyer of Vermin, and now Watcher of Dog, did not approve the addition of this drooling apprentice. Should it prove useful—perhaps as a living foot warmer or an early-warning alarm for ghosts—I might reconsider.
Until then, it lives on borrowed grace.
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