In the first times, after earth was decanted from the universal fluid but long before crops, when chaos abounded and organization came slowly, Prometheus was. Man-maker after all else, he’d gifted the goods away by the time he came to form people.

To plants he gave the green, and with it the ability to make food and air. To birds he presented flight. The fish he endowed with the power to breathe in water. Insects were given invincibility; the exoskeletons that protected them also limited their size, or they would have controlled the planet immediately.

To bears went patience. Elephants perfected long memory. Cats were equipped with night vision and balance. Dogs, then called hunds, were provided with nonstop noses and fashioned as empathic opportunists.

Indeed, whatever wasn’t created, named and characterized, that which remained after Prometheus finished, is what we call cancer: chaotic immortal life without gift.

The last creatures made by Prometheus, the stuff of detritus or the apex of creative genius, depending upon point of view, were people. It’s a matter of esoteric debate whether humans were fashioned from stellar material, or from bits of earth mixed with ocean which still contained motes of heaven, but it’s generally understood that people were made in the god’s image and that all the divine gifts had already been dispensed by then.

So Prometheus looked upon his complex creations and he pondered. Forethinker foresaw.

And first he gave people language.

But that wasn’t enough. It was mastered too well by women, and its effects proceeded too slowly from its causes. The creatures needed more than verbal skills. Prometheus determined to give people the trick to controlling fire.

To deliver it, he would have to steal some formfire. The problem with that plan, the challenge before him, was that the basis for all earthly fire was a bit of the sun that simmered in Jupiter’s den, and security was tight around it.

Prometheus recruited help. In exchange for an assurance of warmth, Cat accompanied him and showed him the way, silently stealthily, to the den in the dark. In exchange for the promise of cooked food, Hund came with them. For while they could sneak in, Cat-led under cover of darkness, they had to wait for daylight to leave with their prize. The flame was too visible at night. As dawn blushed into the eastern sky, Prometheus took a live ember from the perpetual fire, wrapped it in a fennel stalk, and dashed with Cat and Hund back toward people. And when, as Prometheus expected, the alarm was given and the ways obscured by storms and clouds of divine wrath, then Hund’s nose found the path for them; it didn’t matter to Hund that they were surrounded by cold dense white mists of rage, for Hund’s nose always saw a warm vivid world.

That’s how it was, in the beginning. That’s how people got language and fire. That’s why people have cats and dogs. For the warmth of the hearth, cats agreed long ago to be the one wild thing that lives intimately with people. For the savoriness of cooked food, dogs decided to be … well, exactly what we want them to be.