Cricket rolls over and hops up onto Haru's shoulder. "Well, don't do it again. That should be easy since you can't awaken twice." He licks his paw, and then Haru's ear.

"I really hope I will be able to stay a lot saner than I've been this past week."

Cricket licks Haru's ear again.

"Kitty, that tickles, what are you even doing."

"Nothing."

"Is that so." Pet pet. "Anyway. Julien, this is Cricket, he is a four dimensional monster cat and he likes movies. Cricket, this is Julien."

"I know."

"I am ritualizing the introduction so that more of it will be happening on the explicit level."

"It's often good to have things happen on an explicit level.  Do you have a favorite movie or is that a sucky question?"

"It’s not great. But the 2028 Much Ado. Or Ninotchka."

"Nice."

"You haven’t seen either of them, have you. That’s why it’s a bad question."

"Sometimes it's a bad question because picking a favorite is hard and perhaps not meaningful!"

"No, sometimes it’s hard to narrow it down between the best things that are aiming at orthogonal targets but there are not many truly orthogonal targets and anyone with discerning taste can produce an ordering and what's at the top of it."

A lot of people haven't put a lot of thought into their ordering, or are indecisive even if they have, and - Julien should probably not keep trying to cheerfully and self-depreciatingly bicker about this forever.  "A good question of this kind would ideally lead to good conversation even if the other person doesn't have discerning taste."  ...That's still doing exactly that.  Goddammit.

"Well, I do. Do you?"

"I've watched the remake of Merry Andrew like four times in the past three months.  But that's mostly because the choreography and dance cinematography is the best I've seen; a lot of the rest of it is a bit weak."

"I haven't seen that. Who did the choreo?"

"Emily Kelners.  And Asha Odhiambo directing."

Cricket bats Haru's shoulder a couple times with a paw.

"How do you spell Odhiambo?"

"Uhh..."  Julien takes out his phone and types until autocomplete saves him.  He turns his screen toward Cricket and Haru.  "Like this."

Haru adds it into some kind of shared document for Cricket. Thumbs up.

Thumbs up!

"Incidentally I haven't acquired backlash or needed to stop myself from acquiring backlash this conversation."

"In a way where it maybe only works on humans or do you think something else is going on?"