Эрин Хантер - Cats of the Clans

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.