It wasn’t long afterwards that I began to think of myself as apart from other people. I no longer felt part of the mass ebb and flow. I became, perhaps a little too, aware of my own uncontrolled jostling in eddies of circumstance.

Physical signs quickly followed. The first was probably the sharpening of my back teeth. I ran my tongue along them and drew my own blood. The taste of it was exotic and quickening. I cut my tongue a few more times, just lightly. Blood drained down my throat.

For a few days I wore a glow of humming adrenaline. I sought out strangers’ eyes as they passed me in their transit around our city. I raised an eyebrow and nodded at anyone who’d look back at me. No kindred soul made themselves known. As the adrenaline burnt itself out the knowledge of my uniqueness forced itself more markedly onto me.

I began to drop things. My hands seemed to be flattening out. My thumbs were fatter, somehow, and they no longer quite so strongly opposed my palms. After the team-building day, at which I accidentally caught a rounders ball in my mouth instead of my hand, I stopped going into work. It was becoming difficult to remember my colleagues’ names. Even more so to force my voice into the shapes of words, although I still understood what people were saying well enough. It was better, I think, to stay away from the office. The air inside buildings was too still.

Finally London felt like mine. The city throbbed. Movement was as necessary to me as breathing. I walked alongside the city’s great river, chasing ideas that were always just beyond my touch. The smells by the river were symphonic. Brought to tears by a particular olfactory melody I pawed a stranger’s sleeve: ‘Do you smell that?’ The man shook his arm until I let him go. It didn’t bother me that he ran, but it did seem a shame that he couldn’t sense the beauty that flowed all around him.

Spread-eagled in between concrete juttings, beneath a bridge, I sunned myself. These were the hot days of the year. I let warmth cover me and enter me. I felt the other’s nearness before I opened my eyes. The top of his head was just visible behind a concrete stack. His eyes caught sunlight for a moment then set it free. I drummed my nails on the stone and waited. Each moment of his approach was a slice of a century. My hairs stood on end; a breeze moved each of them individually and my sweat traced paths between them.

Finally the other was upon me. We bit and scratched, and afterwards I beat him on the back of his head until he left. Now I had his scent I’d be able to find him again. The pain was back. My body was the wrong size for me. Blood ran down the insides of my legs as I tried to re-arrange my clothing. Under the bridge wasn’t a good place.

I travelled south of the river, to where there are more trees. I travelled in daylight. There was no need to run between shadows. I travelled on two feet and no-one took notice of me. I understand this better now. When I reached the place where woods attempt to displace the houses, in guerilla units of four or five at a time, I stepped clear of my old clothes.

There were others here. Their existence twitched my ears and toyed with my nose. What a gift this is, being part of London: its sounds and smells, its things that move in its veins. The sirens of a passing ambulance sent shivers along my whiskers. Two young boys walked near me and didn’t notice me pressed beneath a bush. A raven turned one eye to me and tilted its head up then down then up. The others moved, individuals in the city’s currents. I moved in the city’s currents, an individual. This isn’t a thing I’d change.