Philandros heard the thundering beast before he saw it. He sauntered across the street as if he had all the time in the world, then turned to glance at the bus as it passed a few feet away. Leaves crunched under shoes that trudged along the sidewalk and the air smelled of spice.

He deftly weaved through the sea of legs as he made his way into the little forest in the center of the city. All around him humans were rushing to and fro with their eyes towards the ground, staring but not seeing. It had been a long time since he had given up listening to their conversations and longer still since he had tried talking to them. They rarely had anything interesting to say.

He found his bench beneath the branches and lounged there, letting the dappled autumn sun warm his fur while the breeze brushed his whiskers. As he laid there with his eyes half lidded and his tail twitching, he became vaguely aware of unwanted attention coming from a few yards away. The child would not stop staring. He stayed perfectly still, waiting for it to lose interest. No such luck. The little human came his way and plopped down in front of him.

"What's your name, kitty?" It didn't seem like a rhetorical question.

"Philandros."

She paused, her mouth in a small "O" shape and her big brown eyes blinked once, twice.

"Who gave it to you?"

"A friend."

The child nodded. "Does it mean something?"

"No."

"Can I call you Phil?"

"No."

At this point the child's mother was calling for her impatiently, but before she left, she asked, "Will I see you again?"

"Perhaps."

At the time, Philandros didn't honestly believe he would cross paths again with this peculiar child, but as fate would have it (or as a stubbornly persistent little girl with oversized glasses slipping down her nose would have it), he would see her again the very next day at the same spot.

"Hello Philidandrus!"

He slowly opened his eyes to the butchered version of his name and stared at her with what he hoped looked like loathing.

"I brought you something!" She exclaimed as she dug around in her bright red backpack and pulled out a white container. She undid the latches to reveal what had probably been a very lovely piece of pumpkin pie at some point.

"What is that?" He asked disdainfully. He knew very well what it was. He had been there at Plymouth when it was invented.

"It's my mom's pumpkin pie! It's my favorite, and my book says that pumpkin is good for cats, so I wanted to bring you some!"

"No thank you."

"Oh..." She looked down as if he had just crushed her dreams and killed her dog. Her lower lip began to quiver.

"Oh fine. Give it here." He sniffed the lump of pumpkin and wilted whipped cream. He gave it a tentative lick. Hmmmm...so that's what it tastes like. He tucked in and finished about half of the pie lump in short order. The little girl beamed and bounced off on her way.

She came the next day with the express purpose of showing him the paper mache humpback whale she had made in class. The following day, she prattled on about how this year she would be getting two Christmases instead of one (or at least that's what her parents told her). There was no rhyme or reason to her visits, she simply came.

When the nights grew cold, he would curl up on his red silk cushion under the table in the tiny corner antique shop in Chinatown. When the weight of centuries became too much, that place reminded him of simpler times – when all he knew of humans were their soft hands and warm voices. Everything in there, including the weathered shopkeeper, was old, like him. Her tough, gnarled hands would pat him on the head and feed him leftover dumplings. They reminded him of the hands that had scooped him out of the gutter all those years ago. He could almost remember what it had felt like to fit so neatly in the palm of a hand – to feel so safe and so vulnerable all at once. He forgot human faces, but he never forgot their hands. He remembered the hands that had rescued him, the hands that had thrown him off a bridge, the hands that had pulled the trigger.

No matter the day, no matter the weather, the girl kept visiting him. They would sit on their bench, and he would listen as she told him about how the sun is actually a star, about her plans to be a ballerina/marine biologist, and about how she poured paint on a mean boy's head at school. In the winter she made a snowcat that looked more like a monster than a feline. When the seasons changed and the flowers came, she used her clumsy hands to weave a crown for him, and she proclaimed him to be "King Phelandrius."

On this particular day, the sun wasn't shy, and the wind brushed the jewel leaves. He heard the thundering beast before she saw it coming her way. She didn't see it at all until a moment too late.

Bystanders stood there stupidly with their mouths gaping and their eyes bulging. One of them screamed. He couldn't remember how he got to her side. He sat next to her in the middle of the street, looking into her wide, glistening eyes, until he was eventually shooed away. Even then, he stayed nearby until they took her tiny body away.

The next day, there was a weeping woman sitting on his bench. Philandros hesitated, before eventually jumping up beside her – close enough to touch – and he looked into her bloodshot eyes. They were sky blue and lined with crow's feet, and yet... somehow, they seemed familiar. They sat together for a long time, watching the sun as it peaked in and out from behind the clouds.