"That he was raised as a kittypet.  I admit he has certainly surprised me in the particular ways he has developed incompetence; I would have expected him to be lazy or bad at hunting or unprepared for the harshness of wild life rather than skilled at turning his Clan against an entirely innocent cat.  But kits begin their education well before they're old enough to be apprenticed, and Fireheart spent his first four moons getting coddled by creatures he had no way to talk with."

"Oh. Well, now my guess for what originally set him off was you being prejudiced against cats with kittypet backgrounds. I have no idea how much of a handicap living indoors for four months would be, though, when a twoleg is four months old they can't even sit unsupported."

"I took less issue with Cloudpaw, Fireheart's nephew, since he joined ThunderClan when he was still a young kit.  I would take less issue with an adult kittypet who has their own skills and can be assumed to understand the weight of their decisions.  I did think that admitting a random adolescent into the Clan based not on any personality traits he had displayed at the time, but on the color of his coat, was somewhat hasty; it is true."

"What does him being orange have to do with anything?"

"Maybe an honorable warrior wouldn't divulge even their former Clan's secrets, but since I am clearly dishonorable enough to be exiled I see no reason not to say there was a prophecy stating that 'Fire alone will save our Clan', and Bluestar found the closest orange cat and named him to suit."

"...that's pretty weird but I don't know what's up with prophecies."

"Prophecies are almost always true in some way but the first and most obvious interpretation is not always the correct one.  If there had been a longer wait before bringing him into the Clan than Bluestar having met him once and given him a day to decide, perhaps I would have had less to complain of.  Though - perhaps not; it is true that before Fireheart I had seen no evidence that a kittypet could be a warrior, or even would want to be one if they knew everything it involved."

"It doesn't sound appealing to me but in the absence of a way to talk to twolegs it seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Though I'm not a cat."

"Do you expect that being able to talk to a Twoleg will change what it means for cats to live in a Clan?"

"Not especially, I just think it'll change what it's like to be a kittypet."

"Are you going to serve as a go-between for every kittypet-keeping Twoleg?  Or - " he cocks his head, "do you think the . . . meaning-sights, will let them talk on their own.  - Text, is it called."

"...the text will let them talk on their own. Did you just - derive out of thin air that it's called 'text', from looking at filenames on my computer?"

"I don't know what those are."

Cam pulls up one of the diorama-videos he made. It says "catpoliticsvideo2" in a little bar on the top. "Like this part?" he says, pointing at it.

"I learnt the word after I had already looked at that.  'Cat politics' is . . ."  He repeats the phrase in cat speak instead of English.  "'Video' is the small moving flat past?"

"Yes, that's right, how the fuck did you do that."

"Do Twolegs not learn words?"

"Of course we learn words, but we don't learn them by looking at them and knowing what they mean like that having not previously been exposed to the concept of text!"

"Not 'learn', 'learn'."  Cats apparently have two different words for it, one of which does seem to imply the ability to snatch understanding out of the ether rather than needing to be taught it.

"- huh. Okay, twolegs don't do that second one now that you mention it."

"You'd need it less since you're kits for so much longer, I suppose."

"I guess! How does it work?"

"Sometimes you just know a word you didn't a moment ago.  Like remembering something new."

"Okay but how does that happen?"

"It's something that happens to all cats.  Some say it's a gift from StarClan."