CUM CLAUSES
A bit like ut, the word cum has two distinct jobs in Latin. You may have met it already as a preposition which takes the ablative, meaning “with”: magna cum laude. But it’s more commonly seen as a conjunction meaning, in a nutshell, “when.”
More specifically, cum in a clause with an indicative verb will mean “when.” That clause will be what’s called strictly temporal. “When you go, I go.” “When you get here, we’ll head.”
But cum is also found – very often in much Latin prose – with the subjunctive. In such cases you have three options for translation: “when,” “since,” or “although.” These words correspond to, in more formal language, circumstantial clauses (“when”), causal clauses (“since”), and concessive clauses (“although”). The when in these subjunctive clauses refers more broadly to general circumstances, rather than being strictly temporal. If you keep these three words (when, since, although) in mind as translations for a clause with cum and the subjunctive, that’s enough for the moment. The Latin won’t tell you which word fits best. You have to decide that based on the context. With some practice it will start to come easily.