Sunrise

Jingo looked puzzled. “Not exactly. Only that we could live however we wanted to, because that’s what we deserved. Life was good, he said….”

“Life was not good!” Pod snapped. He sat down and lifted a hind leg to scratch behind his ear. “We had to do whatever Sol told us to, like bring him food and feathers for his nest. And he scared the little cats by telling them that they’d die without him.”

“It wasn’t that bad!” Jingo protested. “You’re just thinking of what happened later.”

“And why wouldn’t I?” Pod stopped scratching to glare at her. “That mouse-brained idiot nearly got us all killed!”

Fritz nodded vigorously, giving his whiskers a nervous twitch, but still didn’t speak.

Lionblaze glanced at Hollyleaf; she looked as shocked as he felt, her eyes glittering and her claws working on the hard Twoleg floor. When Sol had lived in the forest, he never wanted cats to die, Lionblaze thought. Is Hollyleaf wondering if he really could have killed Ashfur?

He was distracted by Speckle’s four kits, who left their mother and scrambled down, one after another, from the soft boulder. Speckle sat up, watching nervously as the biggest of the four, a tom with a flecked brown pelt like his mother, bounced up to Brambleclaw.

“I’m Frisk,” he announced. “What’s your name? Are you coming to live here?”

Brambleclaw shook his head. “We’re just passing through. I’m Brambleclaw,” he added, addressing all the cats. He went on to introduce the rest of the patrol. “Thanks for helping us,” he finished, dipping his head to Jingo. “The dogs would have ripped us to pieces without you.”

“We’d help any cat in danger from those dogs,” Jingo responded. “And you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Thank you.” Brambleclaw bowed again. “Now, can you tell us what Sol did?”

Jingo settled herself on the soft boulder, tucking her paws underneath her chest. Hussar sprang down lightly from the ledge and padded over to sit beside Pod. For the first time, Lionblaze noticed that he had a long scar along his side, where the fur hadn’t grown back. Glancing around, he noticed that the others had signs of injury, too: One of Fritz’s ears was torn, Pod’s muzzle was scarred, and the tip of Jingo’s tail was missing.

“These cats have been fighting hard,” he muttered to Hollyleaf.

He sat down on the hard Twoleg floor, longing for the grass of the forest or the soft moss of his nest in the warriors’ den. Hollyleaf sat beside him, her claws still flexing restlessly, and their Clanmates gathered around.

“Sol didn’t cause any trouble at first,” Jingo began. “He kept to himself and stayed out of kittypet territory.”

“He was the first cat to find this abandoned Twoleg den,” Hussar put in. “He started inviting other cats to live here with him—cats without housefolk of their own, to start with.”

“He said he wanted to keep us all safe,” Speckle mewed, creeping a bit closer to the edge of the soft boulder.

Pod snorted. “More likely he wanted us to do things for him. Lazy lump. He had an easy life here.”

“That’s not fair!” Speckle protested. “We’re safer here than wandering about in the open, sleeping under bushes.”

“So what happened next?” Brambleclaw prompted, before Pod could continue the argument.

“More and more cats joined him here.” Jingo took up the story again. “I lived with housefolk then, but I liked the sound of what Sol was doing, so I came to give it a try.”

“I joined soon after her,” Hussar added. “I liked the freedom. I could come and go without waiting for my housefolk to let me in and out.”

“And catching our own prey was better than eating that dry Twoleg food,” meowed Jingo.

“But why did the Twolegs let you stay?” Brackenfur asked curiously. “Don’t they want this nest?”

“Obviously not,” Hussar replied with a shrug.

“Twoleg kits used to come here now and again,” Jingo explained. “They never tried to chase us out, though, and they don’t come anymore.”

“Sol told us what to do if adult Twolegs came,” Speckle explained. “There’s a dark space right at the top of the nest, with a pointed roof. Sol told us to hide up there.”

“They did come once or twice.” Fritz spoke for the first time. “So we all hid.”

“And the Twolegs never found us,” Speckle added proudly.

Even though he had good reasons for not trusting Sol, Lionblaze realized that what he had done here wasn’t all bad. The cats had shelter here and support from one another. He wasn’t sure why kittypets would want to come, but it was certainly better for loners than trying to survive in the open through the harsh moons of leaf-bare. It was like a Twolegplace version of a Clan.

“So what went wrong?” he meowed.

“Can’t you guess?” Jingo replied bleakly. “The dogs found us. They couldn’t get in here, because most of them are too big to get through that narrow gap at the entrance.”

“A little one pushed his way in, once.” Hussar extended his claws, the beginnings of a snarl in his throat. “He didn’t try it twice.”