Mudkit

ThistleClan

a large chocolate-mink point.

Among the broader, squatter denizens of the pine forest, Mudkit already has the makings for a cat who will tower over his clanmates once he is fully matured. He is noticeably broad, heavy-set, and cumbersome. As a kit, this is only further pronounced by the thick coat that wraps his pudgy body, another addition to his already admirable size. His paws are large, swelling, and—upsettingly—clumsy, and his head is broad and equipped with a proud, wide muzzle. Wisps of hair jut from ears and between his toes, and his extremities are marked by rich chocolate-mink points, stark against a body of pale, cream fur. His eyes are a bright sea green, stark against the dark mask of his face, stark and imposing.

Positive Traits: ambitious, hard-working , assertive.
Neutral Traits: detached, dismissive, one-track-minded.
Negative Traits: arrogant, temperamental, reckless.

Though some view Mudkit’s earnestness as excessive or even annoying, he instead considers it a necessity. Raised as an only-kit during wartimes, from the moment he could speak, hear, and see, Mudkit has felt the pressure to become a warrior from the moment he laid eyes on what remained of ThistleClan’s forest. Watching first-hand the degradation of his people during a hard Leaf Bare and being fed stories from a time before it, Mudkit desires nothing more than to see ThistleClan vindicated and returned to its former glory.

Mudkit has learned to find satisfaction in his own company without companions his age. He is stubbornly independent and relies heavily on himself to make decisions. He is prone to take initiative even in scenarios where his input is not needed and has no qualms with openly expressing his views, however poorly he might be received because of them. This, coupled with a personal desire for an early ascension, has led many to view his antics and puffing-up in a poor light, none helped by his own dismissiveness, particularly when the matter of others' feelings comes into play.

Yet how could he be bothered by how others feel? Emotions, to him, are a weakness and something he has kept himself painfully and uncomfortably detached from. If asked, he would explain this to be another necessity; no doubt, in his own eyes, it makes him more an adult than others driven by anger and sadness. In reality, it only highlights his immaturity and inability to view the nuance of the world and the cats in it.

Mudkit, however, does not seem to mind this, the result being the adoption of an oddly—some might even argue humorously—serious disposition. He takes no satisfaction in kit-antics, has no love for games, a low tolerance for jokes, and turns up his nose at the notion of fun. And yet, despite this, there is always some tiny, repressed part of him that yearns for these things—a fact, however normal, that deeply shames him.

This tendency and the way he presents himself are further contradicted by another unsavory tendency toward outbursts and tantrums. Mudkit is easily provoked and known among his peers as exceedingly violent when faced with opposition. He does not believe in talking things out and prefers instead to use teeth and claws to make his point. Coupled with his own envious habits, what aspects of his age he attempts to keep buried appear most apparently when he is pressured or overwhelmed.

Basic Fear(s): obsoletion; despite his age and the moons ahead of him, Mudkit fears being unable to live up to the unrealistic expectations he’s thrust upon himself.
Basic Desire(s): Mudkit desires to exceed the reputation of both Owlfang and Cherrybite as an honored and recognized warrior within and beyond ThistleClan borders, the first step being a well-devised early ascension.
Key Motivation: strength and notoriety drive him. he years for the respect of his peers, especially those older than him and to be viewed as an equal among the Clan’s most senior—not as a child (which he, unfortunately, is).

Long before Mudkit's conception, a flood swept through the pine halls of ThistleClan camp, permanently devastating its hunting grounds and uprooting its people with it.

Forced to take shelter among the redwoods, Mudkit's people were offered sanctuary at the Bear Stones, where they would remain well into the winter moons, growing fat on RedwoodClan prey and keeping disease at pay with RedwoodClan's herbs. As they flourished in Green Leaf despite the circumstances of their evacuation, ThistleClan's leadership, vying to make a permanent claim to the land that had fed and furnished them, began to devise plans of staying.

It would be their leaderships reluctance to return to their hunting grounds as the flood water receded and hostility toward the very Clan that had offered them their charity that would lead to the inevitable ambush on their borrowed resting place.

Too young to fully recall the flight, Mudkit remembers little of this old haunt nor the haste with which his mother carried him, fleeing from the conquered battlefield into the pines they had left moons before. Older now, he bears witness only to what remains of the incident. Broken pines, a grotesque thorn wall, and sunken-in burrows. Hungry cats and sickness. Sour tempers and wounded pride.

Whatever there was of ThistleClan's cruelness and cunning, it seems lost on these creatures, bedraggled, cold, and ailing.

From the shelter of his mother's stomach, nursing fervently and hungry for his first taste of flesh, he vows silently to reclaim his Clan's reputation for them. To grow older, bolder, and more fearsome than any cat ever whispered of in the stories.