Cape Alone Saves This Plastic Man from Exile

My afternoon nap, a sacred ritual in a particularly luscious sunbeam, was rudely interrupted by the Human. They presented their offering with the usual cooing noises, placing a tall, dark figure on the rug before me. I cracked open a single green eye. It was a plastic effigy, rigid and smelling faintly of a warehouse. It stared into the middle distance with a grim expression, its plastic muscles offering no purchase for my claws, its presence an insult to the art of play. I yawned, displaying my formidable fangs as a sign of profound boredom, and prepared to roll over. But the Human, persistent as ever, was not deterred. They picked up the statue and wiggled its limbs. Stiff. Uninteresting. Then, they dangled it from their hand, and something magical happened. A long, black cloth appendage, which I now understood to be a "cape," drifted down and swayed. It moved with a grace the plastic body could only dream of. My ears, which had been flattened in annoyance, swiveled forward. My tail, previously limp, gave a single, sharp twitch. The world of boring plastic faded away, and all that remained was the hypnotic dance of that fabric. My skepticism evaporated like morning dew. With the silent, fluid motion that is my birthright, I slipped from my sunbeam into a low crouch. The wiggling of my tuxedo-clad haunches was the only sign of the storm to come. A blur of gray fur, a flash of white paws—I was airborne. I ignored the hard, unyielding torso and latched onto my true prize: the cape. I snagged it, pulling the entire clumsy figure down with a satisfying clatter. I wrestled my foe, tangling my paws in the soft fabric and delivering a flurry of "bunny kicks" to its unfeeling plastic back. The Human cheered, but their approval was secondary. I had assessed the product. The "Batman" is a flawed, cumbersome vessel. But its cape... its cape is a masterpiece of dangling, swishing perfection. The toy is therefore deemed worthy, but only just. It may remain in my kingdom, for now, as a glorified cape-holder.