"Waiting for somebody. And reading about your local twolegs population."

"What's reading?"

"You can invent a marking that signifies a sound, or an idea, and then put lots of them together, and when you look at the signifiers in a row you can figure out what the sequence of meanings or sounds was, and thereby communicate without talking out loud."

"Wow.

You haven't seen any forest cats around, have you?"

"I don't know what makes a cat particularly foresty."

"They live in the forest instead of with housefolk?  Um, they don't have collars; they're usually skinnier; most of them are scary but the ones I'm looking for aren't . . ."

"Why're you looking for them?"

"I haven't seen them since the fire and I don't know if they're okay - their names are Cloudpaw and Fireheart - one of them's white and very fluffy and the other one's orange, both toms - "

"I can't actually identify cat gender on casual inspection."

"I always thought that when housefolk weren't being helpful it was because they couldn't understand what we were saying to them.  Are you avoiding the question on purpose?"

"I don't know if the people you're looking for want you to find them, so I don't know whether it would be good of me to help you."

"They're my kin!  You don't have to tell me where they are - I just want to know if they're alive - "

"Look, I've been in this world for like two hours, I have never spoken to any cats before today - well, intelligibly to the cat - and I don't want to go around leaking a lot of information without having clarified with anyone if that's okay."

Princess huffs.  "Okay.  Will you tell them I was looking for them if you do see them, though?"

"That I am willing to do! You said Cloudpaw and Fireheart?"

"Yes.  Thank you."  And she jingles off further info the woods.

Cam goes back to reading. Mostly about cats, in case the local humans know their cats are sapient.

They don't seem to.

The sun is still quite high in the sky when Cam's summoner (or at the very least a similar-looking cat who seems to expect his presence) approaches, accompanied by a light ginger tabby and a grey cat with a twisted and scarred hind leg.  The three of them take turns opening their mouths as if in silent conversation, then look at Cam expectantly for a moment until the orange one says, " - Oh, you have to talk down here like this or otherwise they can't hear you - greetings, Twoleg."

"Greetings. What was your name? I don't think you ever introduced yourself."

"I'm Fireheart, and these are Sandstorm and Cinderpelt.  What was yours?"

"Cam. If you can't pronounce that I can make something up though. Princess was by and looking for you."

"Who's Princess?  No I can't pronounce that."

"Specifically Princess was looking for Fireheart and Cloudpaw, not you. How's 'Bell', my name has a part that means that in my native language."

"Kittypets have a way of translating Twoleg names; that'd be 'Cam' - she's Cloudpaw's mother, my sister - she was here?  In the forest?  Did she go back to Twolegplace?"

"She went that way, I don't know what her ultimate destination was."