Mistystream highlights a problem in the Warrior Cats universe.

Kitten Problem in Warrior cats, and real life.
Also, if you don’t understand how reproduction works, this article might be a bit confusing. It does not have anything mature or inappropriate in it though!
Many animals of all kinds are overpopulated. This is due to accidental breeding, or purposeful breeding.
First: Accidental.
This often happens when owners with intact animals(dogs, tomcats, stallions etc.) find a female in heat. Of course, unless they are being supervised, or a well enough trained to leave her alone, will try to have babies with her. This also happens on the street as well, when intact animals have babies together.
Purposeful breeding.
So of course not all purposeful breeding is bad. But in order to be a good breeder, you have to pay attention to everything about the animals you are breeding. They need good temperaments, health, and the two dogs genes must mix well together to produce healthy animals. Many people just want cute babies, but get overwhelmed. They might abandon them, try to sale them, or hand them to already overpopulated shelters. Shelters already have too many animals to keep, so they have to choose which ones get put to sleep.
So how does this relate to Warriors?
All wild and domestic cats in warriors are intact. Yes Firestar and Smudge were too young to be neutered. But since they were not fixed, they should not have been let out to roam freely. Also it shows princess, roaming around while she is pregnant. This is incredibly irresponsible, because she cannot escape danger as well. She cannot fight as well or climb and run as fast. She could have contractions, cramps, etc while she out in the forest, leaving her vulnerable.
In warrior cats, the wild cat population has sky rocketed from the first books. Humans have done nothing to control it. The cats often demonize the vet and being fixed. This is setting a bad example to children, who think that cats don’t like to get neutered.
I’ve seen the argument that cats don’t like the vet because they want to have babies. That not true. They don’t like the vet because the poked and touched and get annoyed. Whenever the testicles/uterus is removed, they lose the want to mate completely. They don’t care, or even think about having babies.
Now, this is a bit different in dogs.
Here’s why:
If you have a domestic dog, especially male, that is intact, you have to be careful. They need to always be monitored around female dogs no matter how well the training goes. Unfixed males have the tendency to escape your house, if they smell a female in heat. The will break into your neighbors yard if there is a female in heat. But training can counter this, at least mostly. If you train your dog not to hump females, it will generally work. So as long as you don’t let your intact male around intact females unsupervised, you should be fine.
Now for the females, they will flirt with the males if they are intact, and will often encourage them to mount her. A unfixed female dog will also bleed or become grumpy, aggressive, distracted while in heat. They might even mount and flirt with other females or fixed male dogs.
Another thing is that intact dogs, especially males, will still try to mount fixed dogs. Male dogs might still harass fixed females. This happened with my dog. She is spayed, but whenever my cousins brought their intact male over, he kept mounting her. Even though he best friend, an fixed male gsd, tackled him off her a few times, he kept persisting. My dog finally got so mad at him that she attacked him. Thankfully they were both fine.
Back to cats. Intact toms should always be monitered around intact females. But if you let an intact cat roam around, they are more likely to encounter another intact cat. They are also harder to train than dogs, so training your intact cat will be harder than intact dogs. There are the same problems with cat and dogs. Females will bleed, become more moody etc. Intact toms will often mark their territory, sometimes even your house.
So conclusion: Warrior cats should stop demonizing the vet, cut down the wild population by human intervention, or maybe more cats leaving to become kittypets. This is a real problem, and large groups of wildcats will chase out native wildlife. They might hunt to much prey, causing native wildlife to starve.
Owning an intact animal is not bad, but it takes much more effort to keep them from breeding, escaping etc. It takes a dedicated owner to own an intact animal.
Really interesting article!😁👍
Interesting
Interesting!
Great Article!!
Great Article! I agree
I think the main reason that cats in the books demonise neutering is to relate to real life (I was planning to write an article on this, so I’ll just put it in short)
The main reason in real life it is a good idea to neuter male cats is because their one main goal is to have as many kits as possible, so their bloodline is carried on. Since female cats can have kits belong to multiple fathers in one litter, a male cat will attempt to kill the young kittens.
Meanwhile, in the books, cats mirror the nuclear family, so of course it isn’t as big as a problem as it is in real life, but the fact that owners do not neuter their kittypets is just bad. They also see neutered cats as being lazy, whilst intact cats are adventurous, which as far as I’m concerned as a dog owner, isn’t true.
If young kids, on top of thinking the feral cat epidemic is ok, also think that not neutering a cat who isn’t going to be used for breeding is ok, that just causes big problems, so probably Warrior Cats should be a better example (specifically the kittypet owners who always manage to suck)
yes! the bad kittypet owners bug me soooo much
ysss the owners are weird i dont own a cat or dog or pet but ive seen wet cat food in stores so they don’t JUST eat kibble…plus kibble is flavored, the cats need to shake of the attitude
Great article but the dog part is a little over the top. Also the series needs to have half the population to be wiped out.
I feel like you taught us all a good lesson….
… why you should fix your dog
I hope this is not the same or cats
What happens is worse for cats 😛
well at least you learned something. I wanted to use this article to educate as well as bring some problems to light. Also, I gave you quite a few reasons why you should neuter your cat too. Also i used dog terms a bit more because i am more familiar with their behaviour
Also just curious will a fixed male cat attack or mount a intact female cat?
Just like dogs, a in heat female cat will attract every male within a massive area of her. Males will first fight any other males around to prove they are the strongest, scream mating calls and use their urine to also prove dominance (disgusting)
The female basically picks the cat who she thinks is hottest, and chases away and attacks those who she doesn’t like
Anyways, after they do the thing, the female will immediately attack the male for reasons that aren’t suitable to state on the Blog (don’t google it unless you REALLY want to know. This kind of stuff is very disturbing haha). Then they do it a few times again. The males won’t attack the female at all, rather the female attacks the males.
This is the most in depth explanation I could give whilst still staying censored. Thank you cat behaviour book for teaching me these things
yeah, i tried not to get too detailed lol
If they did that though, the warriors series would, I think, become smaller. I don’t think they would have as big of a thing in warriors. (Check the CODE!) But overall, good article!
yes, but they managed just fine, if not better in Into the wild with less cats. It would also just help you know all of the clan cats better. greencough epidemics would be more impactful, as characters you know and care about are dying
ALso another thing i would like to add is that it should show at least some of the warriors becoming kittypets, and loving their knew life, and being shown with responsible owners
Yeah, we don’t see Snaptooth, Flywhisker, or Buster (Rippleclaw?) ever again lol
great article but if warriors was that realistic then they wouldn’t be warriors since cats don’t like to live in clans (also i don’t understand what heat means…? don’t we all feel warm and cold? also if you know pls don’t tell me I once googled warriors and found disgusting and confusing stuff about warrior cat characters being in heat and i was so confused)
It’s essentially the point every month[?] where female cats start emitting special chemicals to attract potential mates.
Yes, it is about once a month for hmans, not sure how long for cats or dogs
Dogs and cats it’s very 6 months or every year I believe, don’t know which 😛
Are you talking about .’s? If so that’s different from attracting males
Actually, female cats live ingroups, and kick out all of all of the males to avoid inbreeding, and when a female goes into heat she attracts male. She is able to become pregnant during heat,
Very interesting article! Super well written! This is all true.