Probably some kind of sublimation, Rhiow thought, scrubbing her ears. And a vhai’d nuisance, in any case. She leaned back, bracing herself on one paw, and started washing the inside right rear leg.

Well, at least the timing isn’t too abysmal. The others will be up shortly, or else they won’t have gone to bed at all: just fine either way.

Rhiow finished up, putting her tail in order, and then stood and trotted through the landscape of disordered furniture, noting drinking-vessels left under chairs, a couple of them knocked over and spilled, and she paused to pick up half a dropped cracker with some of that pink fish stuff on it. Salmon paid, she thought as she munched. Not bad, even a night old. She gulped the last bit down, licked a couple of errant specks of it off her whiskers, and looked around. I wonder if they left the container out on the counter, like those others?

But there wasn’t time for that: she was on call. The bedroom door was shut. Rhiow started to rear up and scratch on it, then sat back down, having second thoughts: if she wanted both breakfast and an early start, it was smarter not to annoy them. She looked thoughtfully at the doorknob, squinting slightly.

It took only a second or so to clearly perceive the mechanism: friction-dependent, as she knew from previous experience, but not engaged. The door was merely pushed shut and was sticking a little tighter at the top than the bottom, that being all that held it in place.

Rhiow gazed at that spot for a moment, closed her eyes a bit further, and presently came to see the two patches of dim sparkle that represented the material forces at work in the two adjoining surfaces of the stuck spot. Under her breath she said the word that temporarily reduced the coefficient of friction in that spot, then stood on her hind legs and leaned against the door.