Stickers Arrive as Offering; Pete Accepts the Terms

The ritual began in the low light of the evening. My human hunched over her glowing rectangle, a reverence in her posture usually reserved for filling my food dish. Spread before her like bizarre, flat tarot cards were the thin squares of vinyl. They smelled faintly of plastic and promise—the promise of a mess. I observed from the arm of the sofa, tail twitching in mild irritation. She was performing some strange cartomancy, laying out faded effigies of towers and bridges and crumbling arenas, murmuring their names to herself. A pointless human endeavor, I concluded, and began a preemptive bath. My ablutions were interrupted by a crisp, satisfying *shhhk*. My head snapped up. She had peeled the soul from one of the squares. Its ghostly white backing, light as a winter moth, fluttered to the floor. Ah, now *this* was something of substance. I launched myself from the sofa in a silent, flowing arc, landing with a soft *thump* and pinning the paper ghost with a single white paw. It was a worthy, if fleeting, adversary. I batted it under the credenza where it would live out its days as a trophy. While I was occupied, the human had stuck the colored husk to the back of her machine. It was that tall, pointy metal structure from Paris. She added another, a great stone bowl from Rome. I padded closer, my curiosity finally piqued not by the stickers themselves, but by the pattern she was creating. This wasn't random. It was a map. I sniffed the pointy tower. It did not smell of France; it smelled of warm electronics and opportunity. The Roman bowl looked less like a ruin and more like a perfectly colossal, sun-drenched place for a nap. She continued her work, creating a mosaic of the world. But I saw it for what it truly was. She wasn't decorating her laptop; she was building a tribute. A prophetic blueprint of my domain. Each landmark was merely a symbol for a place I would one day conquer with a nap: the Great Wall a perfect ledge for surveying my kingdom, the Pyramids ideal scratching posts. When she was finished, she stroked my back, pleased with her work. I gave the newly decorated surface a long, slow blink of approval and then proceeded to lie directly upon it, claiming my new, flat territories. The stickers were not a toy, I realized. They were an offering. And they were, for now, accepted.