The Book of Night With Moon by Diane Duane

light. The sound of the ra'hio being turned on had awakened her. A long day, she thought. I don't usually oversleep like this…
    She twisted her head around so that she was looking at the living room upside down. A soft rustling of papers had told Rhiow even before her eyes were open that Hhuha had just sat back down at the other end of the couch. Iaehh was nowhere to be seen; Rhiow's ears told her that he was not in the sleeping room, or the room where he and Hhuha bathed and did their hiouh. So he was out running, and could be gone for as little as a few minutes or as long as several hours.
    Rhiow knew in a general way that Iaehh was doing this to stay healthy, but sometimes she thought he overdid it, and Hhuha thought so, too; depending on her mood, she either teased or scolded him about it. "You're really increasing your chances of getting hit by a truck one of these days," she would say, either laughing or frowning, and Iaehh would retort, "Better that than increasing my chances of getting hit by a massive cardiac, like Dad, and Uncle Robbie, and…" Then they would box each other's ears verbally for a while, and end up stroking each other for a while after that. Really, they were very much like People sometimes.
    Rhiow yawned again, looking upside down at Hhuha. Hhuha glanced over at her and said, "You slept a long time, puss." She reached over and stroked her.
    Rhiow grabbed Hhuha's hand, gave it a quick lick, then let it go and started washing before going for her breakfast. So, Rhiow thought while the news headlines finished, there's still an oil spill. This by itself didn't surprise her. Timeslides, like any wizardry meant to alter the natural flow and unfolding of time, were rarely sanctioned when other options were available. Probably the Area Advisory for the Pacific Region had noticed the availability of a handy alternative instrumentality: natural, "transparent" in terms of being unlikely to arouse ehhif suspicions, and fairly easily influenced— of all the languages that humans use, only the wizardly Speech has no equivalent idiom for "everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."
    Oh well, Rhiow thought. One less thing to worry about. She spent a couple more minutes putting her back fur and tail in order, then got down off the couch, stretched fore and aft, and strolled over to the food dish. Halfway across the room, her nose told her it was that tuna stuff again, but she was too hungry to argue the point.
    Wouldn't I just love to walk over to you, she thought about halfway down the bowl, looking over her shoulder at Hhuha, and say to you, loud and clear, "I'd think that last raise would let you spend at least sixty cents a can." But rules are rules…
    Rhiow had a long drink, then strolled back to jump up on the couch and have a proper wash this time. She had finished with her head and ears when Hhuha got up, went to the dining room, and came back with still more papers. Rhiow looked at them with distaste.
    As Hhuha sighed and put the new load down on the couch, Rhiow got up, stretched again, and carefully sat herself down on the papers; then she put her left rear leg up past her left ear and began to wash her back end. It was body language that even humans seemed sometimes to understand.
    Rhiow was pretty sure that Hhuha understood it, but right now she just breathed out wearily. She picked Rhiow up off the pile and put her on the couch next to it, saying, "Oh, come on, you, why do you always have to sit on my paperwork?"
    "I'm sitting on it because you hate it," Rhiow said. She sat down on it again, then hunkered down and began kneading her claws into the paperwork, punching holes in the top sheet and wrinkling it and all the others under it.
    "Hey, don't do that, I need those!"
    "No, you don't. They make you crazy. You shouldn't do this stuff on the weekend: it's bad enough that they make you do it all day during the week." Rhiow rolled over off the paper-pile, grabbing some of