"Sure."

"Cool."  She steps aside.  "Couch is over there, have a seat, do you want anything to drink or whatever."

"I'm good, thanks."

"Suit yourself."  She sits in an armchair across from Cam.  Princess hops in his lap.  "So, uh.  What did she want to tell me."

"She wants to see her kits and siblings, you switched catfood and she doesn't know why, she misses the birdfeeder, and, uh, she doesn't know why you're so sad all the time but regardless would not like to be restrained when cuddled."

"Okay, uh.  Uh.  - Why can you talk to cats?  Actually."

"Iiiit's complicated but the short answer is that I'm magic."

"And what's the longer answer?"

"I am a variety of magical creature that can be summoned by the actions of a mortal, and my being here is a freak occurrence as far as I can tell since normally I get summoned by a different planet's worth of mortals, but gaining new languages in the process is normal, and apparently that includes cat language, which surprises me at least as much as you."

"Cool.  Is it like - is she as smart as a person, or can you just communicate really well with her but she's still like, a cat."

"Sort of both, honestly. She is an illiterate and cat-personality-having yet perfectly bright person who also happens to have been acculturated as a pet."

"Well.  Tell her I'm sorry for squishing her.  - Oh my stars was that my thing?  Kind of a lame fucking thing but like, I'll take it; 's better than having a thing that isn't fucking lame . . ."

"Your thing? - Princess, she's sorry for squishing you." Switching to meows mid-utterance is kind of weird.

"I'm a September-oh-one person.  Which is also the thing I'm sad about, you can tell her.  - If she understands birthdays?  Do cats have birthdays."

"It's fine and I love her; she just shouldn't do it anymore."

"Princess says it's fine and she loves you, just you shouldn't do it any more. I have been assuming cats are born but admittedly I have not asked? What's the significance of being born September first?"

She makes kind of an emotionally-overwhelmed face at being told her cat loves her.

" - Right, you're from a different world or something.  Uh, so around here, the summer solstice person is like, super inclined to do immoral-seeming things for the greater good, and then something literally always goes wrong with that and it ends up just being in fact bad.  And I hugged Princess for emotional regulation even though I knew she didn't like it, because it seemed like being less emotionally regulated would make me more likely to do bad things and I didn't think she was a person."

"Your summer solstice is in September?"

"Sure is."

"Ours is in June, but I suppose that could just reflect that we had a calendar reform you did not."

"What kind of a month name is June.  What are all your months, actually."

"January February March April May June July August September October November December."

"You have a month named September but it isn't the seventh one??  Also that's more than we have.  - Unuary Druoary"  (the first 'r' is silent) "Triinary Tetrinary Quintamber Hexumber September October."

"I acknowledge that this makes more numerical sense than ours but how long are your years?"