Despite those fears you do not wish, or are not compelled, to move or flee or otherwise hump and flail yourself to scare it off, this bird, this possible rat or man. You are safe in this position, or so you feel, despite its tenuousness, or at least because it is so tenuous and yet so unassailed. You fear that if you were to rock or move yourself out of it, expose or extend some limb beyond whatever cocoon it may be, whether physical or psychic, outside of that which protects you or hides you, assuming something does, that in so doing you would jar it and topple back into action, tilt the world just enough to start it moving again. You are afraid you would become displaced from this calm centre and slide again towards the tumult which certainly awaits around your edges. You try to move anyway; you do not.
You are simply tired, you tell yourself, still exhausted after your dreams and nighttime exertions, although you do not know that it was night when you had them, you do not believe that it was. Call them daydreams: your stacking and sorting, your wandering and trying to locate, those strenuous dreamings-of-some-kind which you are sure that you must have experienced.
You urinate as much as you are able onto the floor by way of your outer clothing; if there is a beast or a man or a bird here then since it is currently static, or if not static then at least contented, or if not contented then frustrated and in its frustration thwarted, whether by some element of the world or its own mind, then it must be provoked into action. Could a bird be said to have a mind, its own birdlike continuity and reasoning, however alien to yourself? You assume it is a bird. Regardless, whatever and however such an internal state may be, this unseen thing would surely take some action based upon the sound or the scent or the other experience of the urination of an intruder onto the floor of the room it was within. Better it strike now, this is your conclusion, or by any other means act while you are still capable in your own mind and limbs of responding to it in like manner, and not senseless in some further sleep or boredom, or taken by humour or unfittness otherwise rendered by fatigue, and thus be unable to counter whatever those attentions might be. So you strain and listen and watch, as far as you are able and for as long as you can stand before your attention falters and, while so primed, you do not see or sense any other motion than those of which you were already aware. So you relax what muscles will obey, feeling powerful now, or at least moreso, or at least having some specific power, however slight, over the man or the beast or the bird in question.
Could it really be a man, to be so provoked and yet take no action? Unless he too is now only asleep, or laughing, perhaps paralysed by hysterical spasms at the creature he has so dominated that it hides below his table and barks and urinates onto the floor through its clothing, what a clown! You laugh, you bellow with laughter, as loud and blaring and contemptuous as you are able, the better to usurp him in his mockery. You whoop for some time, wordless shouts and exults, daring and preferring action over inaction, over being taken as a fool or as a thing to be used for some purpose later, or eaten. You continue until there is commotion again on the surface of the table or above it, you cannot see, at which time you still yourself completely.
You hope it is not a tiger or other large cat, thinking on the images you have seen and tales you have heard of such creatures, their animal strengths and control, their ability to take two steps for each of your one, their ability to think two thoughts, two hunting thoughts, for every one of yours as prey. You think of your direct experience of smaller cats, of their staring out with such fierceness of intent upon their targets, all claws-in-waiting. You think it would be terrible to be so stared-at by a tiger or other large cat, something man-sized, and to know that if you move it will pounce and that if you do not it will wait until you do; such is the difference in the worlds of time that you inhabit that you will not really have moved at all, just set yourself upon the outer bound of some curve of potential action before it is already upon you, some part of you resting in its mouth while its claws pierce and hold you, waiting for you to struggle so that it can tear you apart.
You lie still, with concentration and vigour, considering urine and the spreading damp, hoping that while the smell must be a terrible insult to such a creature, that since it does not act, and has not yet acted even though awake and moving, assuming that those are the only interpretations of the noises from above, that it must not be such, and may more likely be a bird, or a man, or a rodent after all.