Cards Are Useless; My Animated Human Is Priceless

The crinkle of the Amazon package was promising, a sound that occasionally heralds the arrival of freeze-dried salmon. I stretched, my magnificent gray-and-white coat shimmering in the afternoon sunbeam, and padded over to supervise the unboxing. The scent, however, was a bitter disappointment: sterile plastic and cardboard, not a hint of fish. My human pulled out two minuscule chips, one a garish red, the other a stark blue. "Pete, look!" he chirped, holding them out. "Volcanic Beat and Blizzard Fang! Aren't they cool?" I gave him a slow blink of profound indifference. They were smaller than my thumb claw. Pathetic. He ignored my silent judgment, fumbling with that bracelet he’s taken to wearing. He slid the red chip, the "Volcanic Beat," into a slot. The bracelet beeped, an electronic intrusion on the sacred peace of the living room. Then, the truly absurd began. He started pacing, vigorously shaking his wrist as if trying to dislodge a stubborn flea. He’d peer at the tiny screen, muttering about "stats" and "training." He was trying to nurture a fictional fire monster, a creature of imaginary heat and power. I watched his frantic, sweaty display for a moment before pointedly relocating to the very center of the sunbeam on the rug, stretching my paws out and absorbing the real, tangible warmth of the star. I showed him, through my perfect, languid stillness, what true appreciation of volcanic heat looked like. He didn't seem to get the lesson. After a while, he switched to the blue chip, the "Blizzard Fang." His entire demeanor changed. He hunched his shoulders and rubbed his arms, performing a pantomime of being cold. "Ooh, chilly," he said to the bracelet. A creature of snow and ice was now his focus. An amateur. While he was busy pretending to shiver, I hopped onto the back of the sofa, located his favorite dark cashmere sweater, and began methodically kneading it into a perfect, warm nest. I curled into a tight, self-heating sphere of fur, a living demonstration of the ultimate defense against the cold he was so dramatically LARPing. The chips themselves were worthless, insults to the very concept of a toy. They offered no tactile pleasure, no satisfying skitter across the hardwood, no fluttery feather to shred. But as I watched my human alternate between his frantic fire-dance and his shivering ice-cower, a new understanding dawned on me. The product wasn't the plastic slivers. The product was my human. These cards were remote controls that turned my bipedal staff into a source of live, interpretive entertainment. It was a failure as a cat toy, but a stunning success as a human-animator. For that purpose, and that purpose alone, it was worthy.