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Rusty tossed and turned, but couldn’t sleep. The concrete was still warm from the heat of the day, but he couldn’t ignore the fitful growling of his stomach. He’d spent the whole day rescuing that old forest cat and bringing her back to Barley and Violet’s rooftop den - there’d been no time to scavenge or hunt after that. The only mouse he'd caught all day, he'd given to Yellowtooth - or whatever her name was.
He cracked a weary eye open. His two street cat friends, Barley and Violet, were curled up in the corner. The siblings were pressed tightly against the side of the metal roof-box. Violet purred softly in her sleep, and Barley let out a restful snore. Rusty blinked enviously. You’ll spend most nights with an empty belly out here, he recalled Barley saying on one of his first nights. Best to get used to it as soon as you can. The two of them were very kind to let him bring the sick cat to their den. He hoped it wasn't a mistake.
As he drew his eyes over the other two cats, he finally noticed one missing. The forest cat was gone. Rusty sat straight up, his eyes darting around. There was no sign of the scraggly gray she-cat. Did she leave? His heart dropped into his stomach. Oh, what if Barley was right? What if she wasn’t sick, and just played at it to take my mouse? I’m so foolish, I -
A rustle from outside the den caught his ear - followed by the sound of a tongue scraping against fur. Rusty peered around the edge of the den wall. The old forest cat was sitting by the edge of the roof, gray fur turned silver in the moonlight. She was lapping at a clump of matted fur on her leg - with what looked like little success.
The fur flattened on Rusty’s shoulders as he relaxed. No betrayal here, just another cat unable to sleep. Rusty remembered his first night in the city - cold, alone, the claw wound on his face fresh and stinging - and felt a surge of empathy for the old she-cat. He hopped quietly to his feet.
She didn’t look up at him as he padded over, but her ears swiveled in his direction. He sat down a tail length away, wrapping his tail around his paws. “Yellowtooth, right? Can’t sleep either?” He mewed.
The forest cat kept lapping at her leg, pulling away tufts of gnarled gray fur. Her brow furrowed deeper at his question, and she snorted. “What business is it of yours, kitty? And my name is Yellow fang. ” She scoffed from underneath her glare, rolling her eyes. “Yellowtooth… unbelievable. The nerve.”
“Sorry. Yellowfang.”
They both fell into an awkward silence. Rusty watched her work at the matte, huffing and grunting in effort and frustration. It was hard to watch. Rusty was hesitant to break the silence, but against his better judgment he cleared his throat. “Would you…like help with that?”
Her ears turned back and she hissed. “I don’t need your pity! I can handle myself just fine.”
He squinted at her, twitching a whisker. “Of course. Like you didn’t need the mouse I gave you? Or Violet’s water? Or Barley’s shelter?”
“Psh.” Yellowfang hissed softer this time, looking away. “Know the difference between my needs and your foolish generosity, kit.” Even so, she shifted, stretching her leg out a little further. It was an invitation. Rusty scooted closer and started licking at the mattes, and Yellowfang made no move to remove him.
Her fur was oily and stank of road-smells and dirt, making Rusty’s nose scrunch. But he couldn’t help but feel satisfaction as he separated and pulled out the clumps, feeling Yellowfang relax with each one. As he cleaned her fur, he uncovered deeper smells under the exhaust - rich, woody smells. Rusty imagined it was what wild forest cats must smell like.
He’d first spotted her when he saw Yellowfang crawl through a gap in a workyard fence, before collapsing in the dirt. Beyond the fence stretched tall, dark pines - the perfect place for frightening wild cats to haunt. He supposed to himself, at the time, that she could have been a victim of such cats - weak and starving as she seemed. She could have been a lost and battered kittypet like himself. But as he drew closer, the blazing gleam in her eyes made him certain - she was no house pet. She was wild.
His pelt was tingling with questions he had been dying all day to ask. But how to start? He didn’t want to offend the prickly old cat, and risk her running off for real. As he spat out the last of the mattes, he finally asked, “So…have you been in the city long, Yellowfang?”
Subtle. Good.
She turned her head, fixing him with a longsuffering stare. “...You were there when I reached this place. This morning.”
Foxdung.
“Oh. Right.” He swallowed, feeling foolish. “I suppose I was asking if you’d…uh… come from anywhere before then. In particular.” That question was even more foolish than the first! He averted his gaze, trying to hide the embarrassment on his face.
Blessedly, Yellowfang put him out of his misery. She sighed heavily. “If you’re trying to ask if I’m from the forest, then yes, that is where I was before.”
Rusty wanted to spring forward and bombard her with questions. Were you a Clan cat? Did you eat bones? Could you knock over a tree with a single strike? Did you sing to the moon and chase monsters for fun?
Then he saw the look on her face.
Her ears were low, shoulders drooped, her eyes dark and distant. She looked… sad, a sadness so deep and terrible it held Rusty’s tongue. All his questions and all of Smudge’s stories about wild cats drained out of him. Instead, he scooted a little closer, resting his head on her flank and giving it a small lick for comfort. He almost didn’t want to ask, but felt compelled to. “...How did you end up here?”
Yellowfang didn’t answer, and Rusty fell quiet. Above them, stars peeked out from in between the clouds, straining against the city lights below. In the distance a Twoleg monster howled, high and mournful, fading lower as it moved on.
The rumblings and keenings of the city were familiar to Rusty by now, and all but faded into the background as they sat together. So when Yellowfang spoke again, even though her voice was hushed, the sudden break in the quiet made him jump. “You first.”
“What?"
Her orange eyes gleamed inquisitively as she looked over her shoulder at him. “How long have you been in the city?”
Rusty blinked, then looked away. “Long enough.”
“Don’t play coy.” Yellowfang’s gaze felt like it pierced him to the core, looking past fur and bone to his very soul. “You’re not like those two in the den over there. I can tell they’ve always been loners - the black and white one, especially. You could smell the discomfort coming off of him from miles away, having to interact with me. But you came right up to me, like you were out for a midday stroll. Not to mention that. ” She flicked his collar with her tail.
Rusty flushed, ducking his head down and pressing the collar deeper into his fur to hide it. It was threadbare now, loosening as days on the street made him thin. “Lots of cats out here have collars.” He muttered.
Yellowfang’s face creased in a grin, knowing she had found a sore spot. “Sure, but someone put them there. You’re a kittypet! I could tell the moment I laid eyes on you. Did the Twolegs who kept you lose interest?”
“No!” Rusty hadn’t thought about his old Twolegs in moons, but felt offended on their behalf at Yellowfang’s implication. “They were very kind to me.”
Yellowfang pushed, eyes piercing. “If they were so kind, then where are they? Leaving their poor soft kitty to be bullied by a scary wild cat.” She wheezed a laugh.
“They didn’t leave me!” Rusty almost shouted. His fur was bristling, and he realized he had leaped to his feet, claws unsheathed. Yellowfang stared at him passively, eyebrow raised. He took a deep breath, sheathed his claws, and sat down again. “They didn’t leave me. I left them.”
“Whatever did you do that for?” Yellowfang looked around at the bare rooftop, the oily smoke rising from chimneys, and the reflected light off grumbling monsters below. “I don’t see the appeal. A kitten like you could be fat and cared for.”
Why was the old cat pushing this so hard? Her questions were hitting a spot too close to home for Rusty. His chest felt tight, and he gave it a few licks, trying to loosen the tension. “I didn’t… intend to leave and come here. It just sort of…happened.” He sighed, avoiding meeting Yellowfang’s eyes. “To be honest, where I wanted to go was the forest.”
For some reason, Yellowfang didn’t seem surprised at this. She just continued to look at him, her expression unreadable. She finally tilted her head in a clear invitation. Go on.
Despite himself, Rusty found himself telling her the whole tale. When he would start to trail off, just a look from those orange eyes invited him to keep going. The words came slowly at first, and then started to tumble out of his mouth in a rush. He told her about his friend Smudge and his tall tales, about fat old Henry who’d never caught a bird, about his Twoleg house with its tasteless kibble. He told her about days he spent sitting on the fencepost, staring out into the woods, straining his ears to catch the sound of birds and leaves rustling. He told her about the nights spent dreaming about hunting mice, stalking through sun-dappled undergrowth, powerful and free.
And finally he told her about the night his curiosity had gotten the better of him, when he’d entered those woods. He told her about the wild cats he had met - and what they had done.
“There was a little one first. Maybe a little older than I.” He said quietly. “Black fur. I didn’t see him in the shadows until he jumped me. We fought for a moment, but I threw him off pretty easily, and I saw he looked so worried…so I let him know I didn’t want to fight. He seemed relieved, I think. We got to talking, and he said he was training to become a warrior. His name was Raven...something.”
“A warrior, you say?” Yellowfang ears lifted and she narrowed her eyes. “Go on.”
Rusty shuffled his paws. Remembering this part made the scars on his cheek twinge, and a cold chill run down his spine. “We chatted for a moment, and I was asking him about where he was from, some place called a Clan - but then another wild cat appeared. He was massive, bigger than any cat I’d ever seen, with long claws… He told me I was trespassing, looming over me like a mountain, and before I knew it…” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his scarred cheek against his shoulder, as if wiping away the blood that had fallen. “I managed to run away. I had blood in my eyes and my head was ringing, and I just ran and ran… by the time I came to my senses, here I was in the city. I met Violet and Barley, and they let me stay with them a little while, but since then… I’ve been on my own.”
He fell silent. Yellowfang seemed to mull over his words, flicking her matted tail slowly and thoughtfully. Finally she spoke, her voice low and serious. “Sounds like you got off easy, trespassing on Clan territory. If the cat you described is who I think it is, you were lucky to escape with your life.”
Rusty shuddered. “I don’t doubt it.”
“...Still.” Yellowfang looked curiously at him. “There’s a few things that story doesn’t explain.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you’d had such a bad run in with Clan cats, then why weren’t you afraid of me?” Yellowfang growled softly.
Rusty tipped his head. Wasn’t it obvious? “I was afraid of you. I thought you were going to tear off my face.” He gave a paw a few licks, remembering how much his legs shook when Yellowfang had first yowled at him. “But…”
“But?”
“But you were clearly in trouble.” He pulled his paw over his ear. “I couldn’t just leave you there to die.”
Yellowfang stared hard at him, and he tried not to shrink under her stare. Then she barked a laugh, shaking her head. “You’ve got more fluff in between those ears than brains, kitty. But I suppose I should be grateful for that - your lack of survival instinct might have saved my life, worthless as my life may be.”
She put her head on her forepaws, heaving a sigh. “Well, if you want to go home to your kind Twolegs, the fence where you found me runs all the way past ShadowClan territory down to ThunderClan. I’m sure you could find your way back if you followed it. But…something tells me you already know about that fence.” She looked out of the corner of one eye at Rusty, orange glowing out of dusky gray. “Which bears the question… why not go home?”
Rusty looked out over the city. Lights flashed and twinkled from buildings and monsters, thinning out the farther away you went, like stars bleeding from the edge of the Milky Way. One of those stars had to be the window of his old Twoleg house, or maybe Smudge’s. Why hadn’t he gone home yet? He’d been avoiding the question for moons, trying to ignore it burning in the pit of his stomach. He lowered his eyes. “I… I told my friends I wasn’t afraid of the forest like they were.” His voice was very small. “I was going to have some big adventure, be more than just a housecat. I… I can’t face them, after what happened. It would just…”
“It’d confirm you were everything they thought you were.” finished Yellowfang softly.
Rusty looked at her, and in her face he saw it too. Shame, etched in every hair and whisker. Yellowfang clearly had her own reasons to not go home.
A low breeze rolled over the rooftop, tugging at their ears and fur. The clouds above were being pushed to the horizon. The dark velvet sky was studded with a handful of stars, still stubbornly fighting to hold their place against the moon and city light. Fighting to not vanish into the dark.
The old forest cat huffed wearily. “Well, StarClan knows I can’t judge that. But if it’s any consolation…” She looked at him with a rueful smile and an unexpected warmth. “If you’ve survived so far in a place like this, then I bet you would’ve done just fine in the forest.”
Yellowfang seemed like a cat who didn’t compliment lightly. So he took her words to heart, blinking gratefully at her.
He lay back down again, curled up next to Yellowfang. Her fur was still greasy and tangled, but it was warm, and under the stink he could catch the scent of moss and earth. “Would you tell me what it’s like?” He asked hesitantly. “Living in the forest, I mean.”
Yellowfang closed her eyes, chuckling drily. “If it will get you to be quiet.”
Rusty answered with expectant silence, and she chuckled again.
In the cool summer night air, Yellowfang’s voice floated out over the city as she spoke. “I lived in a Clan called ShadowClan, nestled deep in a marshy pine forest, where the frogs sang every night…”