Analysing Minor Characters 6 : Dewy Leaf by Maplepaw

Maplepaw continues their series on minor characters with Dewy Leaf from DOTC!

Hello BlogClan ! I’m back with yet another minor character analysis, this time of a Dawn of the Clans cat called Dewy Leaf.

Now as usual, let’s start with the basics of Dewy Leaf. She is a tortoiseshell she cat, the former mate of Moon Shadow and mate of Sharp Hail, and the mother of Crow Muzzle, Falling Dusk, Melting Ice, Morning Star, Sun Shadow and Dancing Leaf. Woah. That’s a lot of children !! She is one of the cats who remained in the Ancient Tribe, and has a very interesting past that I will be getting into now !

So first up, Dewy Leaf has a great character arc.
At the beginning of the Sun Trail, Dewy Leaf is first seen shouting at her mate Moon Shadow who has just agreed to leave the tribe with the other cats, knowing full well that Dewy Leaf is pregnant with his kits. Obviously, as any cat would be in this situation, she is enraged, and also scared. It appears that Moon Shadow was the main cat who caught prey for her, and she was worried who would fill that role when he was gone.
However, despite her protests, drawing out a lot of other cats from their dens, Moon Shadow still goes.
So that’s an interesting start, she has to go through a lot of trauma based on cats leaving for the new territory. Hold onto that thought, because we will come back to it later.

After the cats leave, Dewy Leaf still believes it’s a terrible idea, going to out right call the cats who have left cowards.
Page 45 of the Sun Trail – “Good riddance is what I say! Cowards! They’re just leaving us all to starve”

But whats interesting, is that when Grey Wing is preparing to leave to find Jagged Peak, Dewy Leaf seems to have put at least a bit of her initial hostility behind her, and tells Grey Wing to do this
“But when you see Moon Shadow, tell him I hope he’s happy in his new home.” – Page 63 of Sun Trail
This is partially her trying to move on, but just from this small quote you can tell she still has some resentful undertones. She wants Moon Shadow to feel as much guilt as possible for abandoning her. What she really wants is for him to turn around and come back, and say how very sorry he is for ever even thinking about abandoning her in such an important time of her life, when she is about to become a mother, without him.

Now the next we see of her is in Grey Wing’s dream, where she is curled around two kits in Thunder Rising.
The interesting thing about this, is that on the warriors wiki, it isn’t mentioned that her first litter with Moon Shadow had three kits. After doing some digging, I came across something.
The list of kits in her first litter goes as followed
Crow Muzzle
Sun Shadow
Dancing Leaf
Does anyone remember Crow Muzzle and Dancing Leaf ? No ? Are you wondering why ? They are both dead within a moon of birth.
Crow Muzzle is a little she cat with no known description who is stillborn, and only ever mentioned in the plot when Sun Shadow thinks about the sister he never knew. And then only about a moon after birth, we also loose Dancing Leaf to some sort of unknown sickness, a tom it’s no known description, also only heard of through Sun Shadow’s narrative of how he can’t remember his siblings.
So here we have a mother abandoned by her mate, and fearing for the safety of her kits after that event her fears are proven true by the deaths of two of her kittens from Moon Shadow’s litter.
You can imagine the resentment that builds up inside her after this, in her mind it would all be Moon Shadow’s fault her most of her first litter died.

In the Blazing Star we see that Dewy Leaf has taken a second mate, Sharp Hail. Doing some looking into Sharp Hail, you can see a few common links that would push these two closer. Both cats were upset and frustrated by the others abandoning them, and believed that they were being left to starve. It is later shown that both cats believe Moon Shadow to be too reckless and to have not appreciated what he had in the Tribe.
So Dewy Leaf has a litter of kits with Sharp Hail, which further renforces that it was Moon Shadow’s fault that her other litter died, as every single kit in her second litter lives. Later that book she is shown to be comforting Sun Shadow, saying that Sharp Hail isn’t only strict on him because he wants him to be safe.
It is shown to worry her how much Sun Shadow is like his father Moon Shadow, and she fears that he will one day leave her as well.
And later, her fears are proven correct. The last we hear of Dewy Leaf is when Sun Shadow leaves her in the night without a goodbye and goes to follow his father.
This is the time that we need to bring back up what I said earlier about her trauma with cats leaving for new territory. For the second time in her life a cat has abandoned her to go to far away lands.
To her, I expect that Moon Shadow, although it is clearly shown that she loved him, was like a curse. He left, then her kits died and the only remaining link to her former mate left her without a goodbye. You can imagine how hard on her that would have been.

Now onto her personality !!!!

Dewy Leaf is an interesting one for these articles, that usually focus on loyal, kind characters, whereas she is no true presented in that way. This cat is sharp and angry, and bitter. She tries to move on, but a lot of her appearances in Sun Trail show her snapping at other cats. However, she does clearly have a very loving, protective and scared side to her, she loved Moon Shadow, she loves Sun Shadow and she doesn’t want to see any of them get hurt.

Overall, I think that Dewy LEaf one of the most intriguing ancient tribe cats. She has been through so much in her life and I really think she deserves a whole lot more love !
So, tell me in the comments what you think of her ! Is she worth remembering ? Or should she fade into the past as a character with little addition to the warriors universe ?

Thanks for reading !