"Do you already know of any requests the other Twolegs might have for us?"

"They might want to... I don't know but wildly speculating they might want to ask you to kill rats and mice instead of songbirds when possible, or to bring them sick cats for medical treatment, or... form trade relationships, maybe?"

"Rats are crowfood," one of the entourage remarks disdainfully.

"WindClan mainly hunts hares and rabbits anyways."

"Hares? Those things are huge, wow. I don't think they will mind if you hunt wild rabbits but I'm, again, guessing wildly, this world is unlike mine in many ways."

"We're the only Clan who can catch them!"

"Do you have any idea what sorts of things the Twolegs might want in trade?  Or what they might offer us?"

"They might want pest control services? Help figuring out which kittypets can talk and which can't? They could do improvements like the bridge, though I'm going to do that one since it sounds pressing, and veterinary care - though talking cats do seem importantly different, so while I expect they can improve on medicine cats' state of the art in some ways I don't know by how much."

Tallstar waits for a few cars to pass rather than try and be heard over them.  The road they're walking parallel to (though not very near) isn't even that busy, in terms of the percent of time there's a car approaching, but it seems to be the sort of wide and deerless country road that drivers feel comfortable going recklessly fast on, and getting good visibility from cat height looks like it might require getting right up next to it.

"You should speak with Barley and Ravenpaw; they already have a trade relationship of sorts doing pest control for the Twoleg in their barn."

"The Twoleg doesn't likely conceptualize it that way but yeah, makes sense."

"I'm not sure they do either, but it seems like the closest thing out of any cats I've met.  Should I send someone ahead to ask if they'll meet us?"

"Sure, if you don't mind!"

"Onewhisker, if you would."

Onewhisker, apparently, lopes off.  After a bit more walking in silence: "The warrior code instructs us to hunt prey only in order to eat it.  You seemed shocked that monsters would try and hurt us even though most Twolegs don't know we're any different from prey; do you live by a similar rule?"

"- uh, I don't kill things even to eat them, though I'd kill bugs, if they were in my space and I didn't want them there. It's normal for Twolegs to kill bugs and mice for being in their space, and food animals, but it's not normal for them to kill cats, unless the cat is their kittypet and they think the rest of their life will be short and painful and it would be better to end it peacefully, and that's not done by hitting them with cars. Separately swerving to hit an animal the size of a cat is very stupid driving behavior even from a purely selfish perspective."

"They also drown kits sometimes."

"Ah. That's probably an attempt at population control."

"Which is what."

"Trying to make sure there aren't too many cats - maybe because they're worried about the birds, maybe because they think you're spreading diseases to twolegs, maybe because they just think cats shouldn't be wild and they don't want to take care of the kits, I'm not sure."

"It's one of the things I would ask them to stop, if you'd pass that on."

"Why do they think cats shouldn't be wild?"

"So, they don't know you can talk, right, and with that as their context cats are just one of many species that are domesticated and normally live with humans. It's obviously not better for any specific cat to be dead rather than living out here but if you're a twolegs who thinks cats in general as a species are better off as domestics then trying to prevent wild populations from forming and continuing makes sense."

"'Domesticated' is - kittypets, but for more than just cats?"

"Sort of. An animal can be domesticated and not a pet - twolegs don't like hunting as much as cats do so they often keep domestic animals that are just intended to eat, like pigs, and they also keep chickens and cows for the eggs and milk respectively. But dogs, for instance, are domesticated as pets."

"But why do they think we'd be better off as kittypets?"

"Kittypets probably tend to live longer and to not get, like, hungry or cold or whatever, and since they don't know how smart you are they don't expect you to abstractly value freedom very much."