The Unread Book
The book is open, which is sometimes as far as a reading intention gets. A message arrives, then another thing worth checking, then the discovery that checking has become the afternoon's principal activity. The cat offers an objection with no interest in whether the interruption is professionally necessary.
I hesitate to turn this into a sermon about discipline. The phone may contain a person who needs an answer, and the book may be dull. Reading is not morally superior to everything that happens on a screen. What troubles me is the ease with which the decision disappears: we meant to do one thing and find ourselves doing another without having chosen the change.
The cat makes the missing decision visible. Something living asks for attention directly, while the page waits without complaint. Neither can compete indefinitely with a device that keeps discovering new reasons to call us back. Perhaps the useful question is simply who, or what, we intended to spend this hour with.