In the bathroom I leap up to test the taps. No sound comes from them except the internal echo of air. I give the metal a lick and sniff the scum that covers the edges of the basin. Ted is not a very clean ted. His bathroom does not look like the bathrooms on TV.

The bathroom cabinet door is open. The tubes sit in long brown rows on the shelves. I stroke them with the tip of my tail, and then give a little nudge. The tubes fall in a clatter, pills raining from their mouths. Pink, white, blue. He never closes them properly, because they’re safety caps and he can’t get them off when he’s drunk. The pills are all mixed up on the dirty tiles. A couple have landed in a puddle, left over from his morning shower. They are already bleeding pink into the water. I bat a green-and-white capsule across the floor.

EEEEeoooeeee. The high song. It’s a message, I know it, and it feels like it’s just for me. But there’s no more time to figure it out because it’s time for her.

I am bound to Ted by the cord, and he is in my care as the LORD has decreed. But I do have a life outside him, you know? I have interests. Well, one. It’s time for her now and that is very exciting.

I race down the stairs and to the window, avoiding the pink bike, taking another route behind the couch, leaving paw prints in the dust. I can’t help being afraid that I’m late even though I know I’m not. But the circles of light are at exactly the right angle on the walls. I hop up on the small green macramé table. If I stand on my hind legs and stretch a little, I can just look out of the peephole that catches the street, through the little oak tree. The cord trails behind me in the air, a luminous silver.

The other peepholes are ted height and I can’t reach them. This is my only glimpse of the outside. It’s a small hole, the size of a quarter, maybe. I can’t see much; a twisted stretch of oak trunk, some bare winter branches, through them a couple of feet of sidewalk. As I watch, the gray sky gives and snow starts to fall gently in the silence. Gradually the sidewalk vanishes under white, each tree branch bears a narrow line of snow.

This is all I know, this little coin of world. Do I mind? Do I miss going outside? Not at all. It’s dangerous out there. This is enough for me, as long as I can see her.