01. video

[firealone]

[This is a bit of a struggle, but Firepaw is doing his best. A very under-sized Litten is trying to put himself in frame, but he's a little awkwardly close.]

Um... hello. Can everyone hear me? My name is Firepaw, I'm- I was an apprentice of ThunderClan. Oh- and I used to be a cat, before I came here. A lot of you know me already, but... yes.

[Just going by his voice, it's pretty clear he's a kitten. Public speaking feels incredibly bad, even without a visible crowd.]

A few of you Twolegs - humans - have four legs now, and I wanted to offer help with getting used to that. I can teach you how to hunt and fight, or at least step lightly. I don't know much about our new powers, but we might be able to practice those together too. I can also help with learning different scents, since I think humans can't smell as well as cats, or... Pokemon. That might make gathering herbs and berries easier, too.

[One more thing which... feels like blasphemy for a cat, but he needs to do it.]

And... if anyone knows how to swim, I think I'd like to learn. If another storm comes with new folk, I want to be able to help them get to shore.

Comments

[moondregs]

Snakes exist in my world, too.

[ Living in the city, Junpei doesn't come across them often. There are, however, plenty of stray cats. ]

Well, cats are excellent hunters. Where I live, they're actually the most detrimental invasive species to small wild animal popu --

[ Then he remembers he's speaking to a cat. A cat who thus far has been very kind to him, and he changes course. ]

Er, what I mean to say, is I can see a cat catching a snake. I've seen cats make big dogs scared with one look.

[firealone]

[Honestly, Firepaw doesn't know all of those words but he takes the sentiment as a compliment. He likes the idea of being a detriment to the small animal population.]

ThunderClan cats try to stay away from dogs - even the small ones seem dangerous. But I bet any cat that can scare away the big ones is really cool.

[Every dog he's personally met has been terrifying, but he was a tiny kitten the last time he saw one up close. Maybe he'd be braver now.]

[moondregs]

Well, there are dog Pokemon here … like Mightyena. But I don’t think you need to be afraid of her.

[ He’s only seen her around briefly, but she’s a guild leader so it wouldn’t make sense for her to be confrontational. ]

[firealone]

That's true - I don't think Mightyena is scary, but I haven't gotten very close to her.

[Partly because he's not a fan of the Mightyena smell, but he would never say that.]

To be honest, though, I am getting more used to spending time around all sorts of different creatures. At a certain point I stopped really thinking of the other Pokemon as 'not cats', since they can all speak.

[moondregs]

Yeah, I guess it does make a difference when you can communicate. It's hard to think of you as a cat like I know back home, since they can't speak. Or, at least, not in a language I can understand. I remember reading somewhere pet cats developed a lot of sounds specifically to get the attention of humans, that they don't use them with other cats.

[ Not that he's given much thought to cats before this, he's a movie nerd not a cat nerd. ]

... thinking about something with the same intelligence level as me as a 'pet' feels wrong, though.

[firealone]

That's true - at least, I did when I was a housecat. It was just sort of instinctive. I kept meowing at different pitches until I found one that got my housefolk's attention, and then stuck to that. The cats in ThunderClan meow sometimes, but mostly when our leader is calling everyone to a Clan meeting.

[The rest of the time they're speaking... vague cat language? The books are unclear.]

The Twolegs back home talked, but it was all garbled noises. Here, it sounds to my ears like everyone is speaking cat. Um... in my world, cats also talked a lot about Twolegs being dumb, since they couldn't talk like us, so I guess it's normal to make that mistake.