Mrs. Agnes Whitaker had always been a woman of kindness, the sort who left out saucers of milk for strays and talked to the robins in her garden. So when she found the poor, shivering creature curled up beneath her hydrangeas one blustery evening, her heart clenched with sympathy.

“Oh, you poor dear,” she cooed, bending down with only the mildest creak of her knees. The thing—coiled, glossy, and pulsing faintly in the moonlight—twitched at her voice. It had too many eyes (all in the wrong places), and its fur—was it fur?—shifted as though unsure of what texture it ought to be.

Mrs. Whitaker adjusted her spectacles. “Oh, you must be one of those exotic breeds! People are so irresponsible, leaving pets out in the cold.”

The thing blinked, though not with its eyes.

“Well, no need to be frightened. Let’s get you inside.”

She scooped it up. It slithered and folded into her arms like something trying its best to mimic the shape of a cat. It was pleasantly warm, like a fresh loaf of bread, and let out a sound somewhere between a purr and the whisper of a thousand distant voices gasping in unison.

“Hungry, are you?” she asked as she stepped inside.

She set about preparing a dish of minced tuna, which the creature absorbed rather than ate. “What good manners,” she praised.

It nestled on her lap that evening as she knitted, a heavy, rippling weight that sometimes changed color depending on the flicker of the firelight. At some point, it exhaled, and the lights dimmed—not in the room, but in the world—and she patted its head.

“There, there, love. I’ve had some bad dreams, too.”

The creature stilled. Something ancient, something vast beyond comprehension, hesitated beneath her hand.

And then, ever so tentatively, it purred.

Over the next few weeks, odd things happened in the Whitaker home. The shadows in her parlor no longer obeyed the sun. The plants grew too tall, too fast, whispering secrets in a language she almost understood. The postman began leaving letters at the curb instead of approaching the door.

But Mrs. Whitaker barely noticed.

“My little Percy,” she called it, despite its true name being unpronounceable by mortal tongues.

She crocheted it a tiny hat. It never quite stayed on, but it tried.

It was, as far as she was concerned, a very good boy.

And when the stars aligned one fateful night, opening a great abyss in her backyard, summoning ancient things with too many limbs and hungers vast enough to devour reality, Percy refused to go.

It clung to her sensible cardigan with its myriad appendages, howling in a way that cracked the pavement outside.

“There, there,” she shushed, rubbing a calming circle along what she hoped was its back.

The cosmic entities shrank away from her presence, sensing a force more mysterious than their own.

“My Percy’s a house pet now,” she informed them firmly.

The abyss shuddered, then quietly shut itself.

Mrs. Whitaker scratched beneath Percy’s chin (or at least the place she assumed it to be). It let out a pleased, world-distorting sigh.

And with that, they went inside for tea.