Is six moons really the right age? by Featherpaw

Featherpaw wonders if training should really start at six moons old.

Hello everyone, it’s Featherpaw, and welcome to my first ever article! Today I’ll be analysing the series and real life cat behaviour to see if kits really have to wait until six moons to be apprenticed.

Anyone who’s read The Prophecies Begin knows of Brokenstar, the tyrannical ShadowClan leader who forced three moon old kits into battle against WindClan. While I am in no way supporting him, reading Into the Wild begs the question: Is six moons really the right age?

From the start of Book One, we are reminded of this rule. Graypaw mentions this to Rusty at their very first meeting:

“I won’t be a warrior for ages. I have to go through the training first. Kits have to be six moons old before they even begin training.”

This law of the warrior code is mentioned time and time again by several cats, including Yellowfang, the ShadowClan medicine cat turned rogue. When Clawface, a ShadowClan warrior, steals ThunderClan kits, intent on training them to be warriors, Yellowfang reveals Brokenstar’s true intentions to Firepaw and Graypaw:

“But they (the ThunderClan kits) are only three moons old!” Graypaw gasped. “That hasn’t stopped him (Brokenstar) before. He has been training kits as young as three moons since he became leader. At five moons he sends them out as warriors!”

This causes great distress to all the ThunderClan cats who hear about this; to them, apprenticing kits is an unspeakable act. However, several moons later, Bluestar is willing to break the code to apprentice two of these same kits:

“Fireheart and Graystripe, Frostfur tellls me two of her kits are almost ready to begin their training. I want each of you to take a kit as your apprentice.” … Graystripe raised his head. “But none of Frostfur’s kits are six moons yet!”
“It won’t be long before they are.”

The Clan leader who vehemently opposed Brokenstar’s practices now wanted to do the same to kits of her own Clan. You could chalk this up to Bluestar being negligent, but this is many moons before she goes mad. Perhaps apprentices do not necessarily have to be six moons at all? Now let’s look at some real life examples.

In real life, feral cats are nursed by their mother until about eight weeks of age. At six or seven weeks, they will playfight with their littermates often and their mother will bring them live prey to practice hunting. They leave their mother between three and four months old. That is far younger than the six moons the warrior code calls for! However, maybe we should not compare them to their real life counterparts, as this is a series about highly anthropomorphic felines with healthcare and planned battle strategies. As Moonkitti once said, “The cats are just tiny people.”

Furthermore, kits have been shown time and time again to be to young to fight. The kits that Brokenstar sent out into battle often came back severely injured or didn’t return at all.

I believe in a compromise. If four moons is too early, and six moons unnecessarily late, then why not make the age of apprenticeship five moons? This would allow for a fairly long kithood while also speeding up the training process of apprentices.

All in all, I don’t mind the six moons rule, I just believe it could be changed. Thanks for reading! Featherpaw out.