"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be."

"It sounded like you thought of vets as something that might make some cats want to be kittypets?  But the one I went to mostly just poked at me, and sometimes cats are different when they come back from them."

"I suppose the use of vets is probably not very obvious when you have no communication established. They're like medicine cats. The part where they neuter folks is a drawback I admittedly did not think of when I said that though."

"Well, we already have medicine cats.  And prey tastes a lot better than kittypet food, and we belong to ourselves and our Clans instead of to Twolegs."  He idly rolls the set of wheels back and forth with one paw.  "Like I said, I respect cats who want to live as kittypets, but - it wouldn't really be living, for me - "

"Well, I hope it works out for you. How much farther are we going?"

"We're not too far from the border.  I wanted to get most of the talking we might want to do alone out of the way now, since each Clan will likely want to escort us off their territory and into the next."

"That makes sense. I'm curious about Starclan?"

"What about them?"

"So, twolegs here apparently turn into stars when they die, and they have a magical drug they can take that lets them go talk to the stars, and I tried it and tried to find cat stars, but I couldn't."

". . . That's . . . very strange.  - Er, that that's how Twolegs work, not that you didn't find any cats there.  I wouldn't really expect it to be the same for us since, you know, we're not Twolegs."

"Yeah, but it seemed like it might work since you call them 'Starclan'."

"It makes sense that you tried; I'm just not surprised it didn't work.  I think they would have told us if they could talk to Twolegs."

"How do they normally talk to you?"

"In dreams.  Omens, sometimes; if they disapprove of a Gathering they'll send clouds to cover the moon, that sort of thing."

"A Gathering?"

"On the full moon, all four Clans meet at Fourtrees," he nods towards something ahead and to the right of them, "under a truce, to discuss business that applies to all forest cats.  And socialize with each other, I suppose."

"...and sometimes this is disapproval-worthy?"

"If it looks like the truce is going to be broken, for example."

"Ah. I'd worry that the twoleg stars and the cat stars were using similar omen channels, honestly, but I guess that wasn't something you knew about before."

"I think medicine cats and leaders and such usually get a feeling about what omens are supposed to mean along with the more obvious signs."

"Well. Maybe I'll take a nap at some point and see if I can get any star dreams."

"I'm not sure they would or would be able to appear in Twoleg dreams.  They don't give most cats any; it's really just leaders and medicine cats for the most part.  - Well," ear-twitch "and me."

"What have your dreams told you lately?"

"The most recent one - that was an omen and not just the regular kind - was a little unusual.  I wasn't sure how to interpret it."

"Oh?"