She-Cats and the Expectation to Have Kits by Frostwillow

Frostwillow takes a look at how she-cats are treated in the series.

I’ve noticed a problematic way she-cats are treated in Warriors, and I think the reason why this happens is bad, because it just creates even more problems in the series, especially ThunderClan.

Also, thanks for the comments on my previous article! It was on WC names I don’t like and I think the name Quietkit was particularly cruel, since the poor thing was probably stillborn.

The issue is the way the story treats she-cats, like their main purpose is to create future main characters. I think the authors acknowledge this issue, because they have had characters like Hollyleaf and Bluestar make comments on this. Both of these cats have felt like the clan pressures and expects them to have kits. One thing I would like to point out is that both of these cats are in ThunderClan, the biggest clan. I personally think that ThunderClan has too many kits. Back in the first series, I felt like I knew nearly every cat in ThunderClan, now I can barely remember half of them. The reason for this is that nearly every she-cat in ThunderClan has gotten pregnant at some point, and that’s realistic for a wild cat colony but there’s already so many other things that are unrealistic in the series that having only a few she-cats have kits would be more realistic.

I feel like she-cats experience something that women experience in real life, everyone asking them when they are going to have children. Male cats are never expected to father kits and aren’t normally even in their kit’s lives half as much as the queens are.

The way queens work is problematic too. Everyone expects she-cats to stay with their kits cramped up in a nursery for half a year, and plenty of she-cats complain about it. When she-cats don’t want to stay in the nursery they are treated like they are crazy, and when a male cat (I can’t think of his name) wanted to raise his kits, I remember him getting almost all negative reactions. Why would a male cat have to convince his clan that he wants to raise his kits? That sounds sort of like the clan expects toms to lead (I’ll get into the problem with she-cats leading soon) and hunt while she-cats take care of kits.

In the community, some fans like to give “meanings” to prefixes and suffixes. Flowers are something that are considered feminine, and fans often label the meaning of this suffix as “being motherly”. And people who assign a gender to this suffix always say it is for she-cats only, which is a separate problem. But I’ve never seen a suffix for fatherly cats. And why is something feminine motherly?

Now I’m going to get into the problem with she-cat leaders. She-cat leaders aren’t supposed to have kits because it apparently gets in the way of their leadership. Which it doesn’t. A she-cat can make decisions for her clan when pregnant. A leader doesn’t have to be able to fight. The role of a leader is not to be the best fighter. After she-cats give birth, they don’t have to be with their kits 24 hours a day or even at all, if there is another she-cat with milk.

There’s many more issues, but I’ve run out of time. Hope you enjoy!