Chapter Two

Black fur

I wake to find that Flaconkit is no longer beside me. I scent he is near by, but I still wonder why he is gone.

That is, until he jumps on me and squeaks, "Open your eyes, Wildkit! It's time to see the world!"

I mew crossly and roll over, covering my muzzle with a paw. My eyes remain firmly shut.

Falconkit jabbed my side with a sheathed paw. "Come on!" He persists. "Mom won't let me see the camp until you open your eyes too!"

See the camp? Let's go! I roll back over and open my eyes.

"Wow," I murmur. The nursery is huge! The walls are made of a yellow-brown stone and the floor is covered with soft nests of moss and smooth bird feathers.

Falconkit grins at me. His silver tabby pelt is fluffy and soft, like the downy plumage of a young owl. Do I look like him? I wonder. I stand up and glance down at my forepaws for the first time. The black fur on them is ruffled and short. I turn to look at my mother's sleeping form. Her tortoiseshell pelt is long and sleek. I bounce over to her and leap up onto her side. With some effort, I manage to stay up.

"We want to go exploring!" I squeak into her ear.

She raises her head and turns to look at me. "So you've opened your eyes, I see?" She says, smiling.

I nod. "Let's go see the camp!" I leap down off of my mother's side and scurry toward a gap in the stone wall of the nursery, Falconkit a few steps ahead. Just before he can make it to the door, a silver tabby she-cat pokes her head in. Her red eyes glow as she glances from my brother, to me and then rest on my mother.

"So they've opened their eyes then, Sorrelstar? I was just coming to see them," She says.

My mother nods and says, "This is Falconkit and Wildkit."

"They're beautiful," The tabby says as my mother nods a second time.

"Wildkit, Falconkit, this is Appleleaf. She's your older sister."

Appleleaf smiles warmly at my brother and me. "I'll keep an eye on them outside," She says.

Falconkit shoves past me and races between Appleleaf's legs. I dash after him, sneezing as the dust churned up by his paws blasts into my nose. I skid into Falconkit's back as I run out of the cave that is the nursery. Standing in a shaft of bright sunlight, we look up to see a hole in the high cave ceiling.

"Look who it is!" Chatters a fast voice. Falconkit and I turn to see two cats, a tom and a she-cat, not too much olden then Falconkit and I.

"Wildkit and Falconkit out of the nursery!" As I look around, I see tons of cats I hadn't noticed a second before. Some are sharing tongues, others are napping on the warm, sandy cave floor, and still others are having fresh-kill. The other two, the tom and the she-cat, step closer. "I'm Redkit, and this is Bluekit," says the she-cat. "Hi Redkit, hi Bluekit," I say, glancing from Redkit's red-tabby pelt to the blue-tabby fur of her brother.

"Thanks for noticing…." Bluekit mumbles in a slow, sing-song voice.

Falconkit and I exchange a confused glance. I shrugged at him.

"He's always like that," babbles Redkit. "Don't let it tie your tail in a knot." She smiled sweetly, her blue eyes twinkling.

Bluekit frowned, his red eyes rolling in at his nose. "I bet it would hurt if your tail was in a knot."

I tried not to laugh.

Suddenly, a huge with paw spun me around. I was looking up into the face of the fluffiest cat I had ever seen.