The rudeness was as it often tended to be from her: unintentional. She refrained from speaking to him for the dual purpose that she saw no reason why any Uchiha short of Shisui or Sasuke (or the Hokage for some maddeningly frustrating reason) would wish to speak with her, and that it was best she have as little interaction with Uchiha other than those as possible. The less visible she was to the Uchiha clan, the less potential suspicion and attention she put on Shisui for his forbidden training of her.

When the man made noise and spoke to her, rather than continue to ignore her as she expected, she blinked and glanced up at him in surprise. She fell silent for a moment, simply petting the kitten that insisted on nudging her hand when she would stop. What was an appropriate response? Was he simply correcting her, or attempting to engage her in conversation?

Instead of determining that, she deftly scooped the kitten up (she was getting some practice handling tiny animals with the leverets that she often summoned while practicing her newest jutsu.) with the hand previously used to pet it, and deposited the mewling creature with him.

Offering help of any kind seemed presumptuous: simple earth jutsu was undoubtedly within the grasp of an Uchiha of his apparent age. If he wished to create a dome over the basket to contain or shield the kittens with, he already would have.

"...Perhaps...the shop owner would provide you with warm milk to distract it with until the rain passes?" It seemed almost as pointless to give obvious advice as to offer assistance, but he had engaged her in conversation, so she was obligated to come up with something to say. That was the sort of thing she fell back on.