"Taking me back to the shelter is what I'd be worried about!  If I were worried at all."

"Oh, were you there?"

"Yeah, that's where I met so many dogs!  And then the Twolegs who brought me to their nest had one too."

"Shelter dogs are probably barkier than usual. You ran away from the Twolegs? I hope they aren't too worried about you, they probably think you got hit by a car."

"They saw me get rescued.  I guess I could have gotten hit in the meantime."

"Rescued? Some Clan cats met up with you and led you to the woods?"

"Fireheart and his mate - Sandstorm, I dunno if you've met her - did.  The Twolegs let me out a bunch but it was so far from here that I couldn't find my way back, and then I guess some barn cat named Ravenpaw saw me or scented me or something, and mentioned it to Fireheart, and then they came and got me."

"I didn't even know Fireheart had a mate. Ravenpaw I've met, he seems nice."

"I'm not sure Fireheart knows either, honestly; he's awfully mouse-brained for how smart he is."

"...how would he not know, is 'mate' here being used in a really loose sense?"

"I don't know how tight a sense Twolegs usually use it in?"

"Twolegs actually usually don't say 'mate' about one another, we have a bunch of more specific words, except in dialects where 'mate' just means 'friend', but if we are using 'mates' to talk about pairs of other species, it tends to mean they're going to have kids together."

"That's not what it means for cats.  I mean, it can, and I bet those two'll have kits together eventually, but you can have kits with someone and not be mates or be mates without kits.  What are the Twoleg words?"

"Most Twoleg cultures have a formal ceremony of some kind you can do and then the parties who have done it are 'married' and are each other's spouses, or for gendered versions husband and wife; before that if they're planning on getting married they're fiancés, before that if they're just in a relationship of that genre it's usually 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' or 'partner' or something sorta cutesy."

"Huh!  That sounds like an awful hassle to keep track of but also kind of lovely.  What about when some Twolegs are romantically together but one of them wants to have kits with someone else?"

(Cloudpaw is missing a very neat notch out of the tip of one of his ears.)

"It's not typical but you'd use all the same words for the romantic Twolegs and the outside source of kid contribution would be called a 'donor'. Or maybe a 'coparent' if they were all raising the kids together. Twoleg children are not called kits, we chose to borrow the name for baby goats instead."

". . . If it's for Twolegs and goats then why did you say it for 'pairs of other species'."

"'Mates' is for pairs of non-Twoleg species. 'Kids' is for young Twolegs and also young goats."

"Yeah, and you called the young other-specieses 'kids'.  And I didn't correct you."

"Yeah, Twolegs sometimes generalize vocabulary like that, sorry, 'kids' has become synonymous with 'children' in many contexts and 'children' - or alternately 'babies' - is more generic but since you can talk I said 'kids' without thinking very hard."

"S'okay; as long as we understand each other I don't see anything wrong with you saying the Twoleg thing and me saying the cat thing.  But I'm not going to say the Twoleg thing unless it's different or more useful somehow.  Like with marriage.  What's the ceremony like; I assume you don't invoke StarClan?"

"We do not! But the details vary enormously - there are a whole fuck of a lot of Twolegs and have been for a really long time, so stuff changes and diverges. I don't know much about what it's like in this area, it's one of the things where I'm specifically pretty sure it's not exactly what it was on mine at this approximate historical time-equivalent but have no idea what replaced it. And I'm not personally married. But I think in the typical case there are vows exchanged about the structure of the partnership they're trying to commit to? And a party."

"That sounds nice.  Maybe I'll copy it and marry °･:*✧Brightpaw✧*:･° someday."

"Awww! I hope Brightpaw likes the idea too."

"I think she might!"  And if uninterrupted Cloudpaw will totally just infodump about how smart and pretty and good-smelling and sweet and perfect his girlfriend is and how much he loves her for like the next ten minutes.