". . . Wait here."  The cat runs off into the fish alley and returns a minute later, heading in the other direction with a passing rub against Cam's legs and an "Okay this way."  Cam is led along a slightly circuitous route - it almost seems like the cat might be trying to make him lose his way but if so it's not enough to be effective even in an unfamiliar city - to a building with several shattered windows.  "There's a tailless door up ahead a little," they say, leaping up on a windowsill and ducking through a missing corner in the accompanying pane.  There is indeed a human-sized door a bit farther along.

A dialect difference! Cam makes a note of this for future cat linguistics. Is the door locked?

Sure is.

Now it's not. In he goes.

Inside it's a dusty, mostly empty building, unlit except for what sunlight can make it through the grimy windows.  There are a few clustered crates; one of them, tipped on its side, has a nest made of a sweatshirt and a small blanket in it.  The calico is sitting primly atop it.  Something glints up in the rafters - a few things, actually, but it's not possible to make out what they are at this distance.

He wants to say "nice place you've got here" but it seems mean. Instead he says, "I'm Cam, it's nice to make your acquaintance" and sits on a non-nested crate.

"Mungojerrie.  Explain the thing you said before?"

"I'm from another world! Many things about my world are very different - for example, here some cats can talk and at home no cats can talk as far as I know." He shrugs his coat off and displays his wings and wags his tail. "Also I'm not, strictly speaking, tailless."

"Oh.  What are you then?  I don't like to say 'Twolegs' because I met a cat once with three legs and missing one more wouldn't have made him one of you.  It hasn't really caught on though.  - And I also met a cat missing most of her tail but she still had a stump and I don't think the other . . . . very big mostly furless usually tailless twolegged pelt-changers . . . do.

"You could say 'biped' which is like 'twoleg' but means the species is typically two-legged. Or you could say 'human', but I'm not a human, I'm a demon, we're just very humanlike."

"Maybe you could all be 'humanlikes', then."  Mungojerrie peers at the closer of Cam's wings.  ". . . Are you going to swat me with that if I sniff it?"

"No, go ahead. 'Humanoids' is a word we use sometimes."

"Okay."  Sniff sniff sniff sniff.  They flinch into a defensive stance at Cam's slightest movement, as if not quite convinced about the swatting.

The (or a) similar-looking cat hops up outside the same shattered window and pokes their head in.

"Hello there!" Oh right, he promised them fish. Dish of sardines.

Mungojerrie steps onto Cam's lap instead of going for the platter right away.  They're much lighter than one would expect of a cat who regularly heisted fish as big as the ones from earlier.  "That's Rumpleteazer, my sister."  They lean a little against Cam's torso.  " - She isn't the same cat as the one I said I didn't know."

Said sister drops onto the floor and circles around to the front of the crate cluster, giving Cam a wide berth until she notices the sardines.  ". . . Hello there," she echoes.  To Mungojerrie: "I might have talked to Presto.  No one else around."

They nod.

Cam was not expecting a lapcat but he holds out his hand to be sniffed. "Presto?"

Sniff sniff.  . . . Headbutt.  "There's a cat named Mr. Mistoffellees and she figured out how to get this one bird to do things, sort of.  And she calls it Presto."

(Rumpleteazer warily starts in on the fish.)

"Mr. Mistoffellees is a she?"

"Yes?  Why is that surprising."

"'Mister' is a title for men, among humans, at least where I'm from."

"What's a men?  - Oh I see.  I think her humanoid was the one who started calling her that, so maybe they don't know she isn't one."

"Oh, if she's got a human that's probably how it happened, yeah. Do you in fact not know the one you said you don't know?"