"Uhhhhhh, about . . . ?  - Oh, that it might be smart to just wait till the shifts are switched, especially since the kittens seem to be doing okay here, but depending on how well Ian can act like a normal person trying to adopt a cat that might not be necessary."

"I could do a practice run here with you and we could see what you think of it."

"Oh, sure, good idea."

Probably they don't need props. Cam refines the cat vocabulary program.

Perhaps to include a back button?  Or, even better, a way to see a lot of options at once, so the wait times on Tenor learning₂ words can overlap with each other?

Hm, yeah, sure, it can display six things at once and the kittens can paw what they're identifying.

This allows Tenor to proceed much faster.

Ian's initial strategy (mosey around letting Princess interact with several cats, play it casual, don't rush things, demonstrate cat husbandry knowledge, mention Princess had kittens a bit ago and seems to be missing them) passes Ivy's muster, though she has few tips (pick a different name to pretend is Princess's given her coworker's political disposition, come up with a convincing time-sensitive reason to want her today that doesn't sound irresponsible).

Felicity leans over to Cam.  "Do you think we should stick around here, hit up other local shelters, or something else?  I'd be happy to go to some on my own - or on my owns - but I would want to have someone who understands cat along so I think we're still bottlenecked on you and Princess."

"Hm, if that's a bottleneck plausibly I should be helping with the machine translation project too." He can do that.

It's decided that Ian and "Livy" will go in with a story about how she's going to get spayed next week and Ian would prefer more time for pre-surgery bonding rather than less.

New carrier?

New totally different looking carrier.

Off they go.

"So is there, uh, a way to learn how to talk to cats?  . . . And have them understand it?"

"I think it shouldn't be impossible for you to learn a few words but I did not have to learn the hard way myself. What do you want to learn to say?"

"Stots, I don't know.  Maybe 'How can I help you?' and some responses they might have to that - 'I'm hungry', 'I'm cold', 'My whatever hurts', that sort of thing?"

In that case he will teach her these phrases in catspeak.

Her pronunciation is honestly pretty good.

Felicity runs Cam through a few updates - no luck on the baby nebula yet but they're still trying; Ethan and one of her are watching the The Favorite series and he's doing about as okay as can be expected; a few resurrectees have emerged with various requests (nothing she's felt like completing her circle over) and some of them have picked out apartments.  She's finished another two pamphlet translations.

"Mrindeh holding up okay waiting for her nebula?"

"I think so.  I've been looking into backup options just in case."

"Thank you. I am so fortunate you volunteered your way into my haphazard worldfixing thing."

"It's quite sincerely my felicitous pleasure!  This is both much more enjoyable and much more worthwhile than parasite prevention."

"Do things try very hard to evolve into parasites all the time?"

"Not all the time, but between the necessary level of surveillance and the speed of the magic there's certainly enough to do."