Faiz.

In his story, as a boy Faiz spent his weekends in the delivery van, riding through the inland villages amid the smell of diesel and cardamom. His father taught him to listen to the engine: a loose belt doesn't sound like a worn bearing, and if you learn the difference before something breaks, you save yourself a breakdown in the middle of the road. Faiz learned it before he turned nine.

That ear came standard: the Arabian red fox has enormous ears that catch sounds others miss entirely. The portrait looks straight ahead, with a clean background: on a kids' T-shirt, it reads at a glance. He's a calm, curious fox, the kind who asks questions instead of offering opinions. Where that hearing comes from, I tell in his biography, and there's a whole family of Animal Kinhood characters.