Warriors from Other Purrspectives- Part One by Spottedpaw

Spottedpaw wonders how Warriors would be seen from other perspectives, namely from the human perspective! Spoilers for AVOS!

Hello! This is Spottedpaw, with my first published article! So, I was brainstorming topics to write about, when I remembered seeing a sign someone who had lost their cat had put up. 😿 So then I thought of what the two-legs must be thinking about a bunch of the events in warriors, from their perspective. So I’ll go over the main cat-twoleg interactions in the series, and I was going to go over some cat-fox and cat-badger ones, but this article was becoming so long I decided to make that a Part Two. Let’s get started!

So the first, obvious one is when Firestar ran away from his twolegs. That reminds me of my neighbors, who had a cat named Wally. He would stay out for an entire weekend at a time, and hunt his own food. But he always came back. Until one day, when he didn’t. We think a fisher-cat might have gotten him, or something else. But anyway, doesn’t that remind you of Rusty? He was exploring outside in the day, and didn’t even go into the woods right by his house. He was brought in at night, so nothing bad would happen. Suddenly, one day he just left. He was gone, and his owners never saw him again, not even once. They must have thought he’d died somehow. Fireheart went back a couple times, and he saw his owner, and their new cat, Hattie. He made sure his owner didn’t see him again, though. Fireheart didn’t even have a second thought about it, and it was just like his being a kittypet for his kithood was something others noticed, and scorned him for. He had left that life behind, just like that. It hardly took him any thinking at all, and I don’t recall him saying anything about feeling bad about leaving his housefolk, just Smudge and the other kittypets.

Another time when the twolegs were clearly aware of the cats was when the new thunderpath going straight through the Clans was built. Cats were being captured to be taken to animal shelters, and the humans believed they were doing the cats a good thing. Not to the cats. The Clans thought the twolegs were capturing them to do who-knows-what and they needed to be saved. And nearly all the cats were rescued from the cages, in the end. The humans must have been shocked when the cats they were ‘rescuing’ all escaped, showing that the cats were getting along, and would even come to each other’s aid! Only Graystripe was captured, and briefly lived with twolegs. Someone left a window open one day, and he climbed out. He brought another house cat with him, Millie. Millie’s owner must have been sure something had happened to her, because Millie was a friendly cat to her housefolk, and didn’t go too far. Graystripe, on the other hand, was always trying to escape, so it must have been sad when he did, but come as less of a shock, but still have been sad. Probably his housefolk actually felt guilty about it, and hoped he survived out in the wild.

Another encounter, also linked to Graystripe and Millie occurred. They met some barn cats on their way to the Clans, who were disliked by the twolegs living nearby, and chased by their dogs. Then, Graystripe saved the human kit, by luring her away from a pond she was about to walk into after a frog. The adult twolegs watching must have been thankful and amazed. They instantly understand cats were friends, not vermin, and the twoleg mother tells off someone else who kicks a soccer ball at Graystripe, telling him cats are their friends. Then, Millie or Graystripe, I forget who, guides the twolegs to the barn cats’ kits. The twoleg mother instantly understands what’s happening, and pets the cats. The dogs are then driven back by Millie, who teaches the barn cats to speak dog.
It’s a happy ending for them, but I’m going to think of it from the twolegs’ PoV. Imagine you moved into a house next to a barn, and brought your pet dogs with you, of course. You learn there are cats living in the barn, but they seem as bad as rats, like they’re spreading diseases and such. Then, you see a little kid walking after a frog, which hops into the water and the kid is going to follow the frog in. Then, a cat runs over and lures the kid away. A second cat comes out, and you pet them. Then, they walk away, and you follow them, to see where they’re going. They walk into the barn, and you see kittens and their parents! You realize cats are good creatures and stuff! Yay!

So for this next one, we’re going to go backwards, to Tallstar. (No, spellcheck, not Tarball.) Remember when he ran away and met Jake? Jake seemed like one of those cats who would go away for days at a time and then come back, so when he went on the adventure with Tallstar, his owners probably weren’t so nervous until a couple days had passed. If the cat didn’t come home then, it would have been very easy to believe something had happened, because he’s out all night, catches his own food, that sort of thing, I’m guessing. So his owners would probably not have had much hope of ever seeing him again, but then Jake did come back! He knew where his home was, and knew he couldn’t just leave it.

Now, I’ll go a little bit forward, to another time when Jake interacted with the Clans. This time, he met a cat named Pinestar, leader of ThunderClan, and showed him the kittypet life, and how it wasn’t actually bad. Jake showed Pinestar a twoleg, I forget if it was Jake’s twoleg, or someone else, but anyway the twoleg was friendly, and convinced Pinestar even more the kittypet life was good, more peaceful, and Pinestar felt it was what he wanted for his final life. The twoleg must have seen a stray cat who needed a home, and thought they were rescuing him. Pinestar probably saw a well-meaning twoleg who gave him food, and took care of him, and cared for him. ThunderClan saw it as betrayal, but Pinestar left anyways. The twoleg couldn’t have known all that, and just thought they were rescuing a wildcat who had live on his own in the forest all his life.

Next, I’m going to skip waaaay forward, all the way to AVoS. Remember Frecklewish? She had been captured by a twoleg, and was trapped with no way to get back to her Clan. Luckily, Violetshine thought up the plan to rescue her, and then SkyClan had their own medicine cat. The twolegs who had her didn’t know all that.

As far as I know, when people are adopting cats who’ve lived in the wild all their life, they expect they’re giving the cat a better life and even if they aren’t adapted to it, that they will adapt and enjoy the house even if they don’t understand they’re being saved. Everyone thinks this will benefit the cats, and in the long run it will be good for them. In Warrior Cats, though, we see this from a different perspective–a FURspective–the cats’ own! The cats see themselves as captured by the two-legs for who-knows-why and they’ll never get to see their family again. They have their freedom taken away and have to eat what looks like slop or rabbit droppings. They don’t get to go outside whenever they want. They can’t go out at night most of the time, which is when cats seem to want to be outside the most.

Well… I don’t know how to wrap up articles… 😹 Those are some fo the cat-two-leg interactions, and the story is kind of sad from the two-leg perspective, just because they have no clue what their cats are doing, and many assume they’ve passed on. In the dedications of one of the books, it says something like “And dedicated to my cat *I forget the name* who ran away to be a warrior”. It’s interesting to think of it from new and nonundersandable (that’s a word?) perspectives for the cats, at least, and how it adds to the books.

Keep watch for Part Two, Cat-Fox and Cat-Badger interactions!