I was coming home around three in the morning, walking down a small street toward a passageway that usually had cats watching from the tops of both walls. I swayed along, hoping as ever to be invited into their world. In that blissful state of mind, I met a wounded cat going the opposite way. I took about three steps before I stopped. I knew what a cat looked like. What I had walked past was not a cat. . . .

I knew many fictional foxes before I ever met a real one – on a London street.