"I can swear to it but I do want to be clear this is not a stronger commitment for me than announcing my intention to take it really seriously. I swear I will wait here for you until sunset."

"That's all I was asking.  It won't be quite that long," he meows, and trots off.

English mostly continues to be English (of the early 2000s variety, even), though he catches a few odd words and constructions here and there before he hears a bell jingling through the forest, somewhere off that way and low to the ground.

And what might this bell belong to?

Another cat, apparently!  Cam spots her before she spots him and she startles once she does.

"Hi?"

"Hello," she chirps back, sounding remarkably unsurprised.

"I'm Cam, what's your name?"

Now she looks surprised.

" - Princess.  You can actually talk, not just imitate cat speak?"

"Yeah, it's a whole thing. Nice to meet you, Princess."

"Nice to meet you too.  What are you doing just sitting in the forest?"

"Waiting for somebody. And reading about your local twolegs population."

"What's reading?"

"You can invent a marking that signifies a sound, or an idea, and then put lots of them together, and when you look at the signifiers in a row you can figure out what the sequence of meanings or sounds was, and thereby communicate without talking out loud."

"Wow.

You haven't seen any forest cats around, have you?"

"I don't know what makes a cat particularly foresty."

"They live in the forest instead of with housefolk?  Um, they don't have collars; they're usually skinnier; most of them are scary but the ones I'm looking for aren't . . ."

"Why're you looking for them?"

"I haven't seen them since the fire and I don't know if they're okay - their names are Cloudpaw and Fireheart - one of them's white and very fluffy and the other one's orange, both toms - "

"I can't actually identify cat gender on casual inspection."

"I always thought that when housefolk weren't being helpful it was because they couldn't understand what we were saying to them.  Are you avoiding the question on purpose?"

"I don't know if the people you're looking for want you to find them, so I don't know whether it would be good of me to help you."

"They're my kin!  You don't have to tell me where they are - I just want to know if they're alive - "

"Look, I've been in this world for like two hours, I have never spoken to any cats before today - well, intelligibly to the cat - and I don't want to go around leaking a lot of information without having clarified with anyone if that's okay."

Princess huffs.  "Okay.  Will you tell them I was looking for them if you do see them, though?"

"That I am willing to do! You said Cloudpaw and Fireheart?"