Cats Of The Clans

You could swim thatriver if you tried, Mosskit. Are you drawn to the rushing black water? Can you guess how it would feel sliding over your fur? You are half RiverClan, remember, and those cats are born with a love of water not shared by any other Clan. This means that they alone can take prey from lakes and rivers, so they go sleek and well fed even in leaf-bare, when other Clans go hungry. They’re not so willing to share prey, either; they were quick to accept Firestar and Graystripe’s woodland fresh-kill when the fish in the river made them sick, but I can’t imagine the favor being returned.

Although they let ThunderClan shelter from the fire on their side of the river, so perhaps I am doing them an injustice. I just find their pride too close to smugness; they say their territory is safe because the 1 58 2

other Clans fear and respect them, but surely it’s a matter of the other Clans not knowing what to do with one end of a fish? Rabbits, voles, and birds can be found on the fresh-kill piles of the other Clans, but they don’t hunt for prey in the lake even though they all have territory that runs down to the shore.

The price RiverClan paid for living by the river in the forest was the invasion of Twolegs every greenleaf. They lived in little dens made of flapping green pelts that were planted in the field next to the water, and they filled the river with bobbing boats that scared away the fish.

Did you know that more RiverClan cats were stolen by Twolegs than from any other Clan? For no more sinister reason than to be kept as kittypets; Twoleg kits would see a RiverClan cat sunning itself on the shore and want that handsome, glossy-furred warrior to live in their own nest. What’s that, little ones? You’ve never heard this before? I’m not surprised; RiverClan keep quiet about it, even now, because hardly any of the warriors came back.

Crookedstar

Crookedstar was theleader of RiverClan when Firestar came to the forest. When he was a kit RiverClan won back the rights to Sunningrocks, and the cats used to swim across the river and stretch out whenever the sky was clear, just to taunt their ThunderClan rivals. Crookedstar and his littermates played too roughly on the rocks one day and he fell and broke his jaw, giving him his warrior name. From then on he had to fight more fiercely, catch more fish, and defend his Clan more loyally to earn the respect of his Clanmates; a less than per-fect cat is not welcome in RiverClan.

Crookedstar knew that a united Clan, even if it contained half-Clan blood, would always be stronger than a Clan that quarreled within itself. He knew who Mistyfoot and Stonefur’s mother was from the moment Oakheart came to him with a tale of finding two kits lost in the snow. It was obvious from the color of their fur and the scent that clung to them. Crookedstar also knew that raising Bluestar’s kits would provide two more strong warriors for his Clan, and give the ThunderClan leader a weakness when it came to launching an attack across the river.

So he chose to be publicly ignorant about where the kits came from.

He was less welcoming when Graystripe crossed the river with Feathertail and Stormfur. Graystripe’s mate, Silverstream, was Crookedstar’s daughter, and Crookedstar wanted to have his kin in his own Clan. But there was no place in RiverClan for a warrior whose heart lay on the other side of the river, and Crookedstar did nothing to stop his Clanmates from making it clear they could never trust Silverstream’s former mate. It was this cunning, this confidence and farsightedness in dealing with his own Clan, that made Crookedstar one of the strongest leaders the Clans have ever seen.

Leopardstar

Leopardstar wasCrookedstar’s deputy, and became leader when Crookedstar lost his ninth life. She shared his pride and his ambition for their Clan, but she lacked his wisdom and tried too hard to defend herself against the other Clans. She couldn’t see Crookedstar’s attitude to half-Clan blood as anything but a weakness, which turned her against Firestar and his Clan of kittypet warriors. When Tigerstar took over ShadowClan and offered a way of making the forest pure Clan, with no petty fighting over boundaries because all cats would belong to one supreme Clan, Leopardstar formed an alliance that would nearly lead to the destruction of every cat.

She realized her mistake when Tigerstar combined their Clans into TigerClan and made himself leader, then made half-Clan cats fight to the death. Whatever Leopardstar had hoped for, this was not it. But she was trapped by her pride and couldn’t speak out against Tigerstar—not because she was scared for her own safety, but because she couldn’t face losing the respect of her Clanmates by admitting she was wrong.

Leopardstar saved her Clanmates by agreeing to join LionClan on the eve of the battle with BloodClan; thanks to Firestar she ended up on the winning side. But she has never forgotten how close she came to destroying her Clan, and if she seems hostile and defensive when dealing with the other Clans, it’s not because she doesn’t trust them; it’s because she no longer trusts her own judgment, and fears for the safety of her Clan if she makes another mistake.

Graypool, Mistyfoot, and Stonefur

Your littermates, Mosskit!You should be very proud of them; they grew into strong, loyal warriors who served their father’s Clan well. Yes, you would have made a fine warrior, too. It is RiverClan’s loss that they didn’t get the chance to raise you with them.

Oakheart gave his remaining kits to one of the oldest queens in RiverClan, Graypool. He knew she would recognize their scent, but he trusted her to keep quiet. Mistyfoot and Stonefur never questioned that Graypool was their mother; they had similar-colored fur, and she treated them the same as any of the Clan’s kits, so why should they? It takes two to make a lie: one to tell it and the other to believe it.

All three of you inherited your father’s strength and courage, and your mother’s good sense and fighting skills. Leopardstar made Mistyfoot her deputy, and they mentored Stormfur and Feathertail. But when Bluestar revealed the truth about their birth, they became the thing Leopardstar hated most: half-Clan cats. When Tigerstar took control of RiverClan, Mistyfoot fled across the river to her mother’s Clan, but Stonefur was captured and killed by Darkstripe and Blackfoot on Tigerstar’s command. Mistyfoot returned to her Clan after the battle with BloodClan. She’ll succeed Leopardstar one day, which means a half-Clan cat will become leader. But it would be a foolish ThunderClan cat who thought Mistyfoot had any loyalty except to the Clan that raised her and her brother.

Silverstream

Silverstream was Crookedstar’s only daughter, and the strength of his leadership earned her the respect of her Clanmates before she had caught her first fish. She was as dismayed as any of them would have been when she fell in love with a ThunderClan cat. She saved Graystripe from drowning not because she had been struck by his good looks from across the river, but because RiverClan were not in the habit of letting dead cats pollute their source of prey. Silverstream did not want to be in love with a ThunderClan cat; when they met in secret, it felt as if she were walking on thorns, and fish stuck in her throat when she returned to her Clanmates at the fresh-kill pile. But loyalty and love are two very different things: all my life I’ve chosen loyalty, which has made my path much simpler. Love makes cats risk everything for the sake of a few stolen moments, ears pricked for the sound of an approaching patrol even when one cat is on his own territory, and should be among friends.

In the end Silverstream paid the highest price of all, bleeding out her life on Sunningrocks as she gave birth to Graystripe’s kits.

Silverstream would always be a RiverClan cat, like her father, while Graystripe was rooted in the forest as deeply as the oaks.

Feathertail

Born on the edge ofThunderClan but raised in RiverClan, Feathertail and her brother, Stormfur, were obvious targets when Tigerstar brought his obsession with pure Clan blood across the river. They were imprisoned in an old fox den with Feathertail’s mentor, Stonefur, and were forced to watch him die in a savagely unfair fight with Darkstripe and Blackfoot. Firestar, Graystripe, and Ravenpaw rescued them and took them to ThunderClan, where they joined their Clanmate Mistyfoot; like her, they chose to go back to RiverClan when the battle with BloodClan was over. StarClan chose Feathertail to go on the quest to find Midnight. Stormfur went with her; these two cats had been through too much to let themselves be separated.

Feathertail was known as a gentle cat, but she had the courage of a full-grown warrior as well as loyalty to her Clan and a firsthand knowledge of what it felt like to be persecuted. Perhaps this is why the Tribe of Endless Hunting made her the subject of their prophecy: that a silver cat would save the Tribe of Rushing Water from the mountain lion that preyed on them. The prophecy came true, but it cost Feathertail her life, plunging from the roof of the cave with the shard of stone that killed Sharptooth. A short life, then, but one that deserves to be pre-served in the Clans’ memory for many moons to come.

Stormfur

Stormfur came tooclose to losing his sister to Tigerstar’s pure-blood madness; there was no way he would let her go on the journey to the sun-drown-place alone. So he ended up watching her die in a shadowy cave far from the forest, as part of a prophecy belonging to some other cats’ warrior ancestors. You might think that would give him reason to hate the Tribe cats forever, but instead he found a new home in the mountains, with the help of a Tribe prey-hunter called Brook. It seems too easy, doesn’t it? Swapping a sister for a mate, and adopting a completely different way of life with cats whose troubles had killed Feathertail?

But nothing is ever that simple. Stormfur was already suited to the mountain life because he had the ThunderClan talent for stalking and leaping after prey. More than that, he could not forgive his Clanmates for betraying him to Tigerstar, and although he would have fought in any battle for RiverClan, he was loyal to the warrior code more than to the cats who shared his den.

But he was born a Clan cat, far from the mountains, and his adopted Tribemates couldn’t forget that. Only Brook was willing to trust him, but we’ve already seen what pitfalls love can bring. Forced out by the Tribe, they followed the Clans to the lake, but RiverClan was even less accepting of non-Clanborn cats, and only ThunderClan would take them in. It was only a matter of time before the mountains called them back.

Hawkfrost

The son of Tigerstarand a lone she-cat called Sasha, Hawkfrost would never be looked upon favorably by StarClan. Sasha brought her kits to RiverClan because she was too weak to care for them herself, and although the life of a Clan cat didn’t suit her, she hoped it would give her children a better chance of survival than if they were left in the wild. She came back for them when she learned that the Clans were being forced out of the forest by Twolegs, but by then Hawkfrost and his sister, Mothwing, were warriors, loyal to the code they shared with their Clanmates.

Even before he knew who his father was, Hawkfrost wanted to take Leopardstar’s place. He trained harder than any other apprentice, prac-ticed catching fish over and over, even though the skill didn’t run in his blood as it did in his Clanmates’, and was rewarded by being made deputy when Mistyfoot was captured by Twolegs. He was clever enough to know that being Leopardstar’s favorite did not mean he was respected by his Clanmates. For that he needed something more… such as a sister who was the Clan’s medicine cat. So he tore the wing off a moth to convince Mudfur that his littermate was the right choice for his apprentice.

Tigerstar must have jumped for joy when he saw that one of his sons shared his hunger. He began visiting Hawkfrost in his dreams, and encouraged him to support Mudclaw in the rebellion against Onestar.

It was Tigerstar’s idea that Hawkfrost should plot with a ThunderClan cat who was already an enemy of Brambleclaw’s to lure Firestar into a trap. But Tigerstar underestimated Brambleclaw’s loyalty to his Clan leader; as Leafpool predicted, blood spilled blood, and the lake turned red when Brambleclaw killed his half brother to save Firestar’s life.

Mothwing and Willowpaw

You must knowMothwing’s secret already, little kits. I should imagine she is a constant puzzle to StarClan, a medicine cat who doesn’t believe in them. Yet they have let her stay, because they can see that she has studied hard and has only the welfare of her Clanmates at heart.

Unfortunately for her, knowing which herbs treat a stomachache is not her only responsibility. Hawkfrost’s threat to reveal her secret meant he was able to force her to make false prophecies, such as the tale about troublesome stones in the river that led to Stormfur and Brook being driven out. When she was unable to receive warnings from StarClan, she didn’t know about the Twoleg poison on RiverClan territory that started killing her Clanmates, and her warrior ancestors couldn’t tell her where to find catmint when greencough struck.

Terrified that her lie might be destroying her Clan, Mothwing confided in Leafpool, who began speaking to Mudfur in dreams on her behalf.

StarClan found a better solution in Willowpaw, the RiverClan cat who showed an interest in becoming a medicine cat while she was still a kit. She became Mothwing’s apprentice and was visited in her dreams by Feathertail and Leafpool for the StarClan part of her training.

Willowpaw accepts Mothwing’s lack of belief in their warrior ancestors because she respects her in every other way—and well she should. For once I believe StarClan has acted in every cat’s best interests.