Warrior Cats / Tropes N to T

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Due to the series' spoiler-filled nature, including Spoiler Titles and even character names, all spoilers aside from the newest main-series book and side book as listed on the main page may be unmarked.

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• Named After the Injury:
  • One old tomcat is named Halftail because his tail was bitten in half by an animal.
  • Deadfoot was named as such because of his twisted ("dead") front paw.
  • After Brightpaw was mauled by the dog pack and lost half of her face, Bluestar gave her the warrior name "Lostface" as a way to spite StarClan. One of Firestar's first acts as leader was to rename her "Brightheart".
  • Upon breaking his jaw while playing on the stepping stones, Stormkit got renamed to Crookedkit, later Crookedjaw and then Crookedstar.
  • One minor character is named Tornear, likely because he has one.
• Name-Meaning Change:
  • The Clans were originally named for their personality/territory: per the books' official site at the time, RiverClan was named for the river they live by and swim in, WindClan was named for their windy moorland territory, ShadowClan for their shadowy marsh, and ThunderClan for the Thunderpath (road) that borders their territory. When they later came up with an origin story for the Clans, this was retconned so that the Clans were named after their founders instead (River Ripple, Wind Runner, Tall Shadow, Thunder, and Clear Sky.)
  • Thunderstar's name as well. According to a Wands and Worlds chat, he was named after the Thunderpath, while the official Warriors app claimed that he was named because he used thunderstorms to hunt prey. The final reasoning, which became the official one, was provided in The Sun Trail: Turtle Tail names him Thunder after his mother Storm and the destroyed house he was born in.
• The Namesake: Midnight is named after the talking badger the cats meet at the end of the book.
• Names to Trust Immediately: Lionheart. He's a pure hero, right down to the end. Fireheart as well.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Adjectives:
    • Dark: Darkstripe is the Big Bad's Dragon. Darktail is also a villain in the sixth series, A Vision of Shadows.
    • Other: Brokenstar is one of the series' villains.
  • Animal:
    • Crow: Crowfeather (though he ends up being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold)
    • Fox: Foxheart (whose name is also an in-universe phrase meaning treacherous/cowardly)
    • Hawk: Hawkfrost, Hawkheart, and Silverhawk are all antagonists. Also, Hawkwing, who is not an antagonist.
    • Lion: Lionheart and Lionblaze. Neither of them are evil, but you would not want to run into either, and Lionblaze in particular, in a fight.
    • Mustelids: There are a couple characters with names beginning with "Weasel-" and "Stoat-", who tend to be minor characters. There was also a kit who was apprenticed and forced into battle at too young of an age named Badgerpaw; as he died, he chose his own warrior name, Badgerfang.
    • Raven: A couple characters have names beginning in "Raven-"; however, they seem to be some of the rare Non-Action Guys in the series.
    • Snake: Snake, Barley's evil brother. Also Adderfang, who's a tough warrior (though not evil). A few other characters have names beginning with "Snake-", but they're very minor.
    • Spider: Spiderleg is one of the biggest snarkers in the series.
    • Tiger: Tigerclaw, the main Big Bad of the series. And his Identical Grandson, Tigerheart, who is a good cat.
  • Body Part:
    • Blood: BloodClan, the evil Clan.
    • Bone: Bone, the second-in-command of BloodClan.
    • Claw: Several characters' names end in "-claw", but special mention goes to Tigerclaw, the main villain, who is a particularly strong warrior.
    • Eye: There are two characters named One Eye/One-Eye; one is a grumpy elder and the oldest cat in ThunderClan, while the other is one of the villains of Dawn of the Clans. "-eye" is also a suffix in names of minor characters (e.g. Archeye).
    • Fang: "-fang" is an occasional suffix in Warrior Cats. Two particular characters of note are Adderfang, a powerful warrior, and Yellowfang, a grumpy elderly medicine cat who was a warrior before becoming a medicine cat.
    • Wing: "-wing" is an occasional suffix, although it's almost always used for a gentle character. "Wing Shadow Over Water" is a Tribe cat who - like all Tribe cats - got her name from the first thing her mother saw at her birth, and knowing the mountains, it was probably a hunting eagle or falcon.
  • Colors:
    • Black: Blackstar started the series as a villain. Blackcough is a disease.
    • Yellow: Again, Yellowfang. Yellowcough is another disease.
    • White: Whitecough is the name of a sickness similar to a cold. Whitestorm is one of the strongest and most noble warriors in the first series.
    • Silver: Silverhawk is one of the Dark Forest villains.
    • Blue: Bluestar is the leader of ThunderClan, and a strong warrior.
    • Green: Greencough is a deadly, contagious sickness.
  • Nouns:
    • Blaze: Lionblaze, one of the protagonists, is not evil, but he does have the superpower of Nigh-Invulnerability and is a dangerous fighter.
    • Cinder: Cats with this in their name tend to be heroic, such as Cinderpelt.
    • Fury: In the Clans' mythology, Fury is a wild boar - the mate of Rage, who can kill a tiger with a single blow.
  • Titles: Duke is a minor antagonist who appears in the first Graystripe manga.
  • Weapons:
    • Hammer: Tigerclaw was originally to be named Hammerclaw until it was pointed out that cats don't know what hammers are.
    • Scourge: Scourge, the leader of BloodClan.
  • Verbs: Slash is one of the villains of Dawn of the Clans.
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: Tribe cats, although most of the time they use shortened versions of their names.
• Naming Ceremony:
  • When kittens reach six moons of age, the entire Clan gathers to cheer them being inducted as apprentices and gaining the suffix -paw instead of -kit.
  • When apprentices finish their training and are accepted as full warriors, the leader gives them their warrior name, a more personalized suffix than the universal -paw or -kit, which makes them a full adult in the eyes of the Clan.
  • Medicine cats, being somewhat above the politics between Clans, gather amongst themselves to give an apprentice their name at the end their apprenticeship, with the rest of their Clans only being told it when they return.
  • Leaders have a somewhat surreal dream experience, where the spirits of their ancestors visit them while they sleep to ritually give them nine lives and the suffix -star.
• The Napoleon: Scourge. Although replace "belligerent" and "pushy" with "mass-murdering psychopathic dictator".
• Nay-Theist:
  • After being betrayed by Tigerclaw, seeing her home destroyed in a fire and a bunch of cats dying, Bluestar goes insane and decides that StarClan is worthless and declares war on them, and also becomes the cat version of a misanthrope. She snaps out of it just in time to save Fireheart before dying.
  • Mothwing starts out believing that StarClan doesn't exist; that "prophecies" are only things medicine cats knew in their subconscious that they just happened to remember in dreams. Eventually she does come to accept that StarClan exists, but she still doesn't truly "believe" in them. And she's supposed to be the religious leader of her Clan...
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Tigerstar towards the end of the first series.
• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming:
  • Leafstar has the tendency to name cats after living friends of hers. For example, two of her kits, Stormkit and Firekit, were named after Sandstorm and Firestar and her third kit, Harrykit, was named after Sol, whose kittypet name was Harry.
  • Sandstorm in turn named her daughter Leafkit (later Leafpool) after Leafstar. May double as a Dead Guy Junior, since the name reminds Firestar of Spottedleaf, whom he crushed on as an apprentice.
  • In Squirrelflight's Hope, two of Moonlight's kits are named Squirrel (after Squirrelflight) and Leaf (after Leafstar and/or Leafpool).
  • Badgerfang is a Played With example, since he named himself after his mentor.
  • Smoky named one of his kits after Daisy, who helped save the kits' lives when their mother died. The kit is nicknamed Little Daisy to distinguish her from her namesake.
  • Tigerstar and Dovewing's second litter are named after their fathers; Dovewing's father, Birchfall, is still alive and is proud to have a kit that shares his name.
• Near-Villain Victory: In The Darkest Hour, Scourge kills Firestar, and is about to defeat LionClan when Firestar, who is Only Mostly Dead, is revived by StarClan, to kill Scourge. This is because Firestar was given nine lives. However, there was still an off-chance that he would have died, given that Scourge killed the previous Big Bad, who also had nine lives, with one stroke.
• Nepotism:
  • Mossypaw accuses Mistystar of this in Mistystar's Omen, since the new deputy is Mistystar's son Reedwhisker.
  • This is brought up by Thornclaw in Graystripe's Vow, who points out that Firestar's third deputy was his daughter's mate, Brambleclaw, who then chose his mate Squirrelflight as deputy when he became leader, and when Squirrelflight becomes acting leader, she chooses her adopted son Lionblaze as the acting deputy.
  • This is also discussed in A Starless Clan; the first cat Frostpaw names as Mistystar's successor is her mother Curlfeather, and the second is her uncle Owlnose, so cats question whether she's just choosing her kin.
• Nervous Wreck: Ravenpaw when he was still a ThunderClan apprentice, and Shrewtooth until SkyClan dealt with the Twoleg that made him that way.
• Never Found the Body: Hollyleaf. No one bothered to try digging up her body after the tunnels collapsed, and it turns out that she actually survived. A minor character - RiverClan elder Duskwater - got swept away in a flood and they never found her body.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: This happens occasionally. In Hawkwing's Journey, Hawkwing and his father grew distant after his brother Duskpaw's death, and part of why his father's death hurt so much was because Hawkwing would never get to speak to him again and make things right. In Pebbleshine's Kits, we see from the dead cat's point of view when Pebbleshine realizes that now she'll never grow old with her mate.
• Never Mess with Granny: Since this is a series full of Action Girls, it's natural that many of them retain their toughness after retiring and are still capable of fighting. Notably, Graypool and Yellowfang have moments where their temper makes Fireheart flinch, and in The Apprentice's Quest when cats ask Bramblestar why Sandstorm's joining the quest since she's an elder, he comments that he was afraid she'd claw his ears off if he forbade her from going. (She agrees that she would have.)
• Never Say "Die":
  • There are a few instances when main characters are dying where death is referred to as "going to hunt with StarClan" or something similar for poetic effect.
  • The word "pregnant" is never used, regardless of how often characters have been pregnant throughout the series. They simply say "expecting kits" or something similar. This can be somewhat justified, because that could actually be how cats talk, similar to the series' use of Gosh Dang It To Heck.
  • There is also when Lionblaze is trying to threaten Ashfur and he says "I can beat you in a fight if I have to," even though it's somewhat obvious he's threatening to kill him.
  • At one point, they refer to Scourge having "destroyed" Tigerstar, but they probably used that word because saying he "killed" him would have been a huge understatement.
  • Subverted in Into the Wild:
    Firepaw: He wants to get rid of Ravenpaw.
    Graypaw: Get rid of him? You mean kill him?
  • Because of the usual lack of squeamishness, when characters kept referring to Hollyleaf as having been "lost" instead of "killed" when a rockfall collapsed on her and they assumed No One Could Survive That!, fans figured she was alive since they made such a point of avoiding the word.
• Never Say Goodbye: Fireheart does this to Yellowfang when he finds her dying. She starts to tell him something she wants him to hear before she dies, and he stops her, insisting she isn't going to die. She knows she is, though, and continues speaking.
• Never Trust a Title:
  • The title is Firestar's Quest, but back when it was released and wasn't quite what readers were expecting, it was often said by fans that Firestar and Sandstorm's Quest would be a more accurate title.
  • Since Cloudstar's Journey is about the ancient SkyClan leader who brought his Clan on a long and harrowing journey to their new home, readers were thoroughly expecting it to be about said journey. It was not. "Journey" is presumably meant to be a metaphor for his emotions throughout the novella.
• New Era Speech: Tigerstar gives one at a Gathering in The Darkest Hour when he announces the formation of TigerClan.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: A bit of subversion with Lionblaze, since his power covers the incredibly wide umbrella of "being really good at fighting", meaning the authors are able to make them take the shape of whatever they're in the mood for writing. Want to show how crazy and out of control he is? He is invulnerable and bloodthirsty to the point where he bathes in his enemies' blood. Need something heavy held up? He has super strength. Bullet time is fun to write? He fights in bullet time.
• New Season, New Name: Each series has a different subtitle: Warriors (later renamed Warriors: The Prophecies Begin), Warriors: The New Prophecy, Warriors: Power of Three, Warriors: Omen of the Stars, Warriors: Dawn of the Clans, Warriors: A Vision of Shadows, Warriors: The Broken Code, and Warriors: A Starless Clan.
• Nice Guy:
  • Onestar was once this, but when he became the WindClan leader, he Took a Level in Jerkass.
  • Brackenfur too. In fact, he's one of the nicest cats in the series.
  • Billystorm, Leafstar's mate from SkyClan's Destiny.
  • Shellheart, the father of Crookedstar and Oakheart.
  • Even Blackstar himself temporarily became this. It causes Lionblaze to jokingly say "Who are you, and what have you done with Blackstar?"
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Hey, Ivypool, we know your intentions were good, but trusting the Dark Forest caused Firestar to lose a life and Russetfur to die. Hope the worthless territory was worth it.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Lionblaze's special power is that he can't be hurt in battle. He can turn this power off if he really wants to, but it's pretty difficult; he only does it once in the series, to prove to the cat who he wants as his mate that they can control their own destinies.
• Nightmare Face: Brightheart from has half of her face torn off by a pack of dogs, leaving her permanently scarred and missing an eye.
• Nightmare Sequence: The authors seem to like horrific blood filled nightmares considering how many there have been in the books. Some even feature the characters drowning in blood.
  • A notable example is in Yellowfang's Secret, in which Yellowfang is forced to watch kits inflict damage upon each other that is far beyond what even an adult cat could. Some kits are so young that they haven't even opened their eyes yet.
  • Also, Lionpaw frequently experiences nightmares where he unknowingly kills his friend Heatherpaw.
  • The trainees in the Dark Forest are subjected to brutal combat training in their dreams each night, and their injuries carry over into the waking world. And if you die in your dream, you die in real life.
• No Animosity in the Afterlife: The Clans all have an intense territorial rivalry with one another. However, all borders break down when they die and join StarClan. Cats live in peace together in StarClan.
• Noble Savage: A huge part of the appeal for the series. You'd think people wouldn't want to live in the forest, only eating when they manage to catch small animals, having no medical care beyond the use of herbs, and constantly being at war with other groups virtually indistinguishable from their own. But ask the average Warriors fan if they'd trade their life for the life of a Clan cat and you'd probably get an unqualified yes. Being a warrior is often portrayed as a more noble and free lifestyle than the 'soft' life of a kittypet (house cat owned by humans).
• No Focus on Humans: The cats almost never see humans or their vehicles unless patrolling the borders of/leaving their territory, and they mainly appear as hazards to be avoided. Only in the graphic novels do any of them get speaking roles, but even then they're minor, and it's because the reader is seeing a bit wider view than the main character's viewpoint, unlike in the actual books.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: At one point, Lionblaze thinks about his Clanmates and wonders if any of them might be siding with the Dark Forest. When he gets to Whitewing, his thought is "Never. Just… never."
• No One Could Survive That!: Hollyleaf at the end of the third arc. Not explicitly invoked, though, so a little less clear odds of coming back than usual.
• Non-Indicative Name: Cloudstar's Journey isn't actually about a journey. The emotions he experiences in it could be called one, but that's a bit of a stretch, and considering that we knew from other books that the character does eventually lead his Clan on a literal journey, fans were expecting that to be what the novella was about.
• Non-Standard Kiss: The cats show love by cleaning each other's pelts or twining their tails together. The latter display of affection is never platonic, but the first often takes place between friends or family.
• The Nose Knows: Since the cast is made up of feral cats, a lot of attention is paid to their sense of smell, particularly the scents of territory markers, their Clanmates' scent trails, and prey; they can even smell others' moods like fear. Some of the characters are noted to have a particularly strong sense of smell, but special mention goes to Dovewing, who has Super-Senses and can smell cats across the lake.
• No Sense of Humor: In Crookedstar's Promise, Rainflower begins scolding Crookedjaw and Oakheart for telling friendly jokes about the queens, making a boring lecture about how the queens "enjoy helping their Clan". Crookedjaw and Oakheart just roll their eyes at this.
• Not Actually His Child: Happens to Brambleclaw when Hollyleaf reveals, to every cat attending the Gathering, that he's not her father and Squirrelflight isn't her mother, but that she and her siblings are instead the children of Leafpool, Squirrelflight's sister and the Clan's medicine cat, and Crowfeather, a warrior from a different Clan who had a legitimate son of his own. Naturally, he took the news pretty hard, but eventually got over it when he decided that, as their foster father, he still loved and was proud of Hollyleaf, Lionblaze and Jayfeather, and that their blood relation didn't matter.
• Not Blood, Not Family:
  • It's a subtle reoccurring theme for characters to stop seeing their adopted parents as their family after learning they're adopted. It isn't mentioned in-text, but several characters stopped referring to their foster/adopted parents as such upon the reveal.
    • Hollyleaf and her siblings take it particularly far, not only becoming more distant from their adoptive mother Squirrelflight upon finding out the truth but outright hating and resenting her for lying to them, with Hollyleaf having a dramatic Freak Out over it.
    • Twigbranch feels out of place due to being adopted and wants to find her "real" family despite her adoptive family being shown to be loving, looking with jealousy at how much biological parents love their children. However, when switching Clans to be with her biological father she ends up regretting it and returning to her adopted Clan.
  • Pinenose, Violetshine's adoptive mother, is described as being very loving towards her biological children while not having much affection for Violetshine. This prompts the aforementioned Twigbranch, who does have more loving adoptive parents, to still wish someone loved her the way Pinenose loved her biological children.
• Not Good with Rejection:
  • Ashfur. He reacts to rejection by deciding that Squirrelflight needs to feel as much pain as he had. He tries to set up her father's death, framing her current mate as a murderer in the process. When that fails, he decides to try killing her kits in front of her. Later on, after his death, he possessed her mate's body, and after she rejected him again, he tried to destroy all of the Clans and StarClan just to get revenge.
  • Raggedstar wasn't good with this either. When Yellowfang (the she-cat he loves) decides to be a medicine cat, he gets angry and refuses to talk with her, and it causes him to demean and insult her a lot.
• Not His Blood: This happens occasionally in battle. One notable instance is when in Outcast, Lionpaw - one of The Chosen Ones, whose special power involves invulnerability and fighting skill - comes out of a rough battle completely covered in blood. His siblings panic, assuming that he's badly injured, and are shocked to discover that none of it is his own.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: StarClan. They're supposed to watch over and guide the Clans, but especially in the fourth series they tend to be bickering too much to agree on things.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Hollyleaf discovers that her entire life has been a lie and in violation of the code she's devoted her life to, has a mental breakdown, and apparently dies in a tunnel cave-in. Five books later, she reappears. In the very next book, she's dead for real - but only after helping save the day in the final battle!
• The Noun and the Noun: Fire and Ice, SkyClan and the Stranger, Thunder and Shadow
• No, You: In The Last Hope, the heroic Brambleclaw has captured his treacherous brother Hawkfrost. Ivypool, Hawkfrost's former apprentice, calls him a traitor, and it shows just how out of it Hawkfrost is when he, the largest ham in the series and eternal master of banter, can only reply with, "You're the traitor."
• Number Two: The Clan deputy is the second in command and succeeds the Clan leader when they die. Both leader and deputy have quite a bit of responsibility, with the deputy doing jobs such as organizing all patrols.

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• Oblivious to Love:
  • Firestar somehow never notices Cinderpelt's obvious crush on him. He also wouldn't have noticed that Sandstorm was in love with him either if Cinderpelt hadn't pointed it out to him.
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy it takes three different cats to get Bluefur to admit that Thrushpelt has feelings for her, despite the fact that he was frequently staring at her, inviting her on patrols, and cracking jokes that only seemed to irk her. Not to mention the fact that she didn't even realize her own not-so-subtle attraction to Oakheart until he confessed his love to her.
  • Bristlefrost doesn't realize that Rootpaw has a crush on her, just briefly noting how it's weird that he's so nice to her due to being fixated on her crush on Stemleaf.
• Odd Name Out: Most of the 1000+ characters have compound names like Bluestar, Mudclaw, Russetfur, Cedarpelt, Whitestorm, etc., so when there's a cat living in the Clans with a name like Boulder, Daisy, or Millie, it sticks out.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Vicky Holmes often jokes that she likes doomed romance. And apparently this is true:
  • Graystripe and Silverstream are from different Clans, and it's very difficult to meet and even see each other, since their relationship is forbidden by Clan law. They're thrilled when Silverstream's expecting kits, but then she suffers Death by Childbirth.
  • Oakheart and Bluestar were also from different Clans. Bluestar became pregnant with his kits, and he offered to join ThunderClan to be with her. However, she stood a good chance of becoming deputy - she wouldn't be eligible for the position with kits - and she felt it was her duty to become deputy since she felt the only other cat being considered for the position would lead the Clan to disaster. Though she wished it could be otherwise, she ended the relationship, and after her kits were born, she gave them to Oakheart to raise in RiverClan.
  • Perhaps part of the reason that so many of these Official Couples are doomed is because they're forbidden. Leafpool and Crowfeather's relationship was forbidden in two ways - they're in different Clans, and she's a medicine cat, forbidden to take any mate. They ran off together for a while, but when disaster struck her Clan she realized that they needed her more than he did. She secretly had his kits a short time later. He took a mate in his own Clan, though the authors have described that as a "marriage of convenience", and they seem to argue every time they see each other afterward - and he refuses to acknowledge Hollyleaf, Lionblaze, and Jayfeather as his kits. Despite this, they still have some feelings for each other deep down, even though they never get back together.
  • In a rare non-forbidden example, Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight. They became best friends after going on a long journey together, even though initially they were always irritated by each other. Their relationship was tested when he began to follow his evil father, and associate with his half brother, who made no secret of his dream to rule all the Clans, and there was a bit of a Love Triangle when Ashfur showed interest in her as well. Their relationship was eventually mended, and StarClan sent a vision of the two as mates, walking into the sky with stars trailing behind their paws in a single path - their destiny intertwined. Everything seemed fine - they had kits. Then it was revealed that they weren't actually her kits; she'd been covering for her sister Leafpool, who, as a medicine cat, was forbidden to take a mate. They barely spoke to each other for at least two years, until Brambleclaw became leader and chose her as his deputy, admitting that she'd always done what she thought was right; they eventually did have kits of their own later on. That, of course, didn't stop more arguments from happening: there's even a moment in Squirrelflight's Hope where Graystripe mentions that Squirrelflight's going to "patch it up", referring to a hole in a den roof, but Millie misunderstands and asks if Squirrelflight and Bramblestar are quarreling again.
  • Dawn of the Clans starts out with an official couple of Clear Sky and Bright Stream, but then Bright Stream gets killed by an eagle. And just when you think that Clear Sky and Storm will work out, Storm leaves and dies, forgiving Clear Sky with her last breath. This ends up breaking Clear Sky pretty hard.
• Offing the Offspring: Of the "bad seed" variety:
  • Yellowfang poisons Brokentail. She considers it her atonement for bringing such an evil cat into the world.
  • In Pinestar's Choice, Pinestar hears StarClan telling him to kill Tigerkit, because the kit has the power to destroy the Clan; Pinestar refuses to.
• Oh, Crap!: Billystorm pulls this when Leafstar gives him a death glare when their kits tell her that their dad wants to take them to his Twoleg's place to stay safe for a while. In fact, he even drops the squirrel he was carrying when he sees her!
• Oh, My Gods!: "Great StarClan!"
• Old Dog: In The Rise of Scourge, an old dog called Sam is sleeping in an alley. Tiny is afraid it'll eat him, but it's too old to chase him, and it loses a tooth as it gets up. As Tiny tries to use the tooth to get his collar off, it gets stuck, and then he claims he got it by killing a dog. So it's thanks to Sam the Old Dog that Tiny became Scourge, leader of BloodClan.
• Older Than They Look: Scourge, mostly because of his small size. Firestar even mistakes him for an apprentice at first.
• Old Master:
  • Whitestorm gets a special mention in that he is one of the oldest active warriors and his age is mentioned multiple times, but he's still a powerful fighter and is popular with all of ThunderClan. That is, of course, before he is killed.
  • Several characters such as Firestar and Graystripe become grandpas eventually, but they're still strong fighters.
  • Even retired elders can still usually put up a decent fight if worse comes to worst.
• Old Windbag: Purdy. When he starts to tell a story, characters often find excuses to leave. Some of them fall asleep in the middle of his stories. Once, he actually did realize that the other cat fell asleep, and when they woke up, he informed them that they missed a lot of the story and so he'd better just start over at the beginning.
• Ominous Owl: Owls are often thought of as ill omens. Justified, since an owl seems quite large to a cat, and owls have been known to carry off kits. However, ThunderClan does occasionally look for owls at night, because if it's windy and they're having trouble scenting prey, they can follow an owl and find prey that way. Heck, one of the Clan Leaders followed a owl every night.
• Omniglot: Midnight the badger is able to speak Badger, Rabbit, Fox, and a few types of Cat, whereas everything else in the series can only speak in the language of its own species (except for one case where a cat knows a little bit of Dog). Why and how she managed to learn all of these is never explained.
• The Omniscient: Rock. Cats of the Clans makes it clear that he knows everything about the Clans and Tribe.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: No cat ever lets Crowfeather and Leafpool forget that they ran off to be mates with a cat from another Clan — especially after it comes to light that Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf are their kits.
• One Cast Member per Cover: Each book has a different cat featured on the cover, which may either be one of the protagonists, or a side character that's particularly important to that book. A few characters repeat, but it's not very frequent considering that there's over 100 works in the series. Even the reprinted covers occasionally feature a different cat than the original version: notably the first series originally featured only the protagonist Fireheart, while the 2015 reprinted covers of the first arc also featured the major supporting characters Tigerclaw, Graystripe, Yellowfang, and Bluestar.

• One-Man Army: Lionblaze, due to his Nigh-Invulnerability. One is example of this is at the ending of Outcast when he takes on a large group of cats who had been giving the Tribe of Rushing Water trouble throughout the book and comes out covered in blood - none of which is his.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy:
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy, Bluefur and Oakheart, who had feelings for each other, decided to sneak out to spend one night together, but then Bluefur decided that her loyalty to her Clan was more important and that that one night would be their only one. Bluefur becomes pregnant shortly afterward. Oakheart originally planned to join ThunderClan to be a father to his kits. Bluefur realized that if she was nursing kits when the deputy position became vacant her Warhawk Clanmate Thistleclaw would be chosen instead, so once they were born she gave her kits to Oakheart to be raised in RiverClan.
  • Fans suspected Spiderleg and Daisy of having a one-night stand when the characters suddenly have kits after barely speaking together. Even then, he barely looks at her and is incredibly awkward around the kits until others criticize him for not being a good father to them. The authors have confirmed that this is indeed the result of the characters having a one-night stand.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted.
  • Each healer of the Tribe of Rushing Water adopts the name of Stoneteller, and Clan leaders always take the suffix "-star" (as a result, there are several Birchstars, for instance).
  • There are many examples of names being used twice (even fairly major characters, like Greywing and Ashfur, and even odd names like Frecklewish), three different cats named Milkfur, Red, and Shadepelt, and four Robinwings.
  • The same prefixes are also re-used multiple times as well. "White-" is one of the most common at over ten uses, and even "Fallow-" has gotten used several times.
• One-Word Title: The entirety of the second and eighth series. Also, Outcast, Eclipse, and Sunrise.
• Only a Flesh Wound: A lot, mainly because their way of life essentially revolves around fighting, and every time a fight breaks out, everyone ends up bleeding from at least one gash. Justified because a cat's claws and teeth aren't nearly long enough to slice deeper than the flesh and muscle or cause major damage unless the injury becomes infected (and since these cats apparently have medical care, infection rates are low). Most injuries referred to in the series are relatively minor, and are true flesh wounds in every sense of the term.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Two Tribe of Endless Hunting ancestors named Fall and Slant are mentioned in Sign of the Moon. We never hear their full Tribe names, just their nicknames.
• Only Mostly Dead: Leaders stay dead for a few minutes before getting the wound that killed them healed and waking up.
• Only Serves for Life: Clan Leaders serve until their death, which can take a while since they're granted nine lives upon becoming leader, so they must die nine times before they'll stay dead. The Clan deputy automatically becomes leader when the leader dies, so this has led to a couple times when a Leader Wannabe deputy decides that his leader's taking too long to die and tries to secretly kill the leader himself.
• Only Six Faces: In the earlier graphic novels by James L. Barry, there are hardly any variations in character design. This isn't a problem usually, because in the Graystripe's Adventure series not very many characters appeared at the same time, but in crowd shots it's very problematic. It's especially hilarious in the gathering at the end when there are four cats in the crowd who look exactly like Ravenpaw (fortunately, this was improved in the full-color rerelease.)
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Sunset, Mousefur and Dustpelt call a Clan meeting about how the Clan's becoming "mixed" with the inclusion of Daisy and her kits. Leafpool's surprised about how Firestar abruptly ends the meeting since he normally doesn't snap at cats like that, and realizes that it must feel personal to him since he was born a kittypet.
  • Jayfeather invokes this by saying he's glad that the cranky elder Mousefur isn't acting all sweet and kind because that would mean she was getting heat stroke from the recent hot weather. Later when she starts acting mopey because of Longtail's death, Jayfeather gets really worried about her well-being.
  • Played for laughs in The Fourth Apprentice, when Blackstar welcomes the journeying cats into his territory with open arms. Lionblaze responds with a snarky "Who are you, and what have you done with Blackstar?"
• Opposed Mentors:
  • In Crookedstar's Promise, the titular character is taught by his real mentor, Cedarpelt, but, unknown to other cats, he also is trained in his dreams by the deceased warrior Mapleshade. Mapleshade focuses more on combat skills, while Cedarpelt tries to explain that being a warrior is about more than just being a good fighter. Even their advice on battle moves differs, though that can be explained by the fact that Mapleshade came from another Clan.
  • In addition, Firestar has a split mentorship for two moons between Lionheart and Tigerstar. As you would expect from their different personalities, they calmly argue from time to time. However, two moons into his apprenticeship, he gets Bluestar as his permanent mentor.
• The Original Series: The first series was just called Warriors, with no subtitle. Fans usually have referred to it as "the original series", although once the 2015 reprint gave it a Retronym ("The Prophecies Begin"), it started being called that as well.
• Origins Episode:
  • The "prequel" Super Editions each star a different important cat from the original series, one from each Clan. Bluestar, Tallstar, Crookedstar, and Yellowfang each get their own novel that starts when they are very young kits and typically ends sometime during the events of series one.
  • Big Bad Scourge got his own manga: The Rise Of Scourge.
  • Dawn Of The Clans is an origins arc for the Clans as a whole.
  • SkyClan and the Stranger tells of the origins of Sol.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Blackstar from temporarily acts nice in The Fourth Apprentice. Lionblaze asks in a snarky tone "Who are you, and what've you done to Blackstar?"
• Out of Focus: The series usually avoids this, despite its large number of characters, but there are still several examples.
  • Hawkfrost, a major character in the ten previous books had his role reduced to ominously floating around the ThunderClan camp a few times from Long Shadows to The Fourth Apprentice. However, he became important again from Fading Echoes to The Last Hope, serving as one of the main recruiters of the Dark Forest.
  • In the Warrior Cats: Omen of the Stars series, other than a handful of scenes, Spirit Advisor Spottedleaf mostly disappeared from the plot, with her role as an adviser being given to Yellowfang.
  • In the SkyClan and the Stranger manga, many characters who were important in Firestar's Quest and SkyClan's Destiny, such as Egg and Frecklewish, simply disappear from the story. This is one of the more understandable times it happened, seeing as SkyClan and the Stranger is a manga that's about 300 pages long, while the rest of the SkyClan Saga is nearly 1000 pages of print featuring many characters.
  • Cinderheart was a major character in the first four books of Power of Three, but after her first character arc was wrapped up in Eclipse, she got little more than a passing mention in Long Shadows and Sunrise.
  • RiverClan's role in the plot was significantly diminished starting in Power of Three although this was due to ThunderClan no longer sharing a border with them, and it having no POV characters unlike most of the other Clans later would. Due to this, RiverClan was finally given a POV in the eighth arc.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: As a kittypet let into ThunderClan, Firepaw was an outcast who nevertheless grew very close with some of the most important members of his Clan: The Leader, Bluestar; The Medicine Cat, Spottedleaf and later Yellowfang, and a few important senior warriors as well. After becoming a warrior, he also had a close relationship with WindClan's leader, Tallstar.
• The Outside World: There's a few layers of this:
  • When a cat is young, they're usually not allowed to leave their Clan's camp until they're six moons old (the equivalent of a young teenager), and the first part of their training is to see the world outside the camp and be introduced to the rest of their Clan's territory.
  • There's not often a reason for a cat to leave his Clan's territory aside from Gatherings. In the first series one of the requirements of becoming a warrior is to go to the Moonstone because it might be the only time in their life they experience a truly unfamiliar area.
  • On a slightly larger scale, it's rare that a cat ventures outside of all the Clans' land altogether. When they do, it's usually treated as dangerous, scary and exciting, and there's usually some culture shock between them and the non-Clan cats they meet.
• Overly Long Name: Most of the cats of the Tribe of Rushing water have these, like Brook Where Small Fish Swim or Teller of the Pointed Stones.
• Overly Specific Afterlife:
  • StarClan and the Place of No Stars are only for Clan cats.
  • The Tribe of Endless Hunting is the afterlife of the Tribe of Rushing Water.
• The Owl-Knowing One: Owlstar was a wise and just leader of ThunderClan who is Famed In-Story. He isn't actually an owl, but he copied his skills from one, and has an obvious owl theme. It's what made him a badass.

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• Panicky Expectant Father: Berrynose of all cats. Of course, being Berrynose, he is this in the most annoying and bossy way possible.
• Panthera Awesome: The cats' mythology says that they're descended from a LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan, and they have folk tales about these Clans (which Word of God says are just stories - the big-cat Clans did not actually exist). One big cat does actually make an appearance in the series - a mountain lion that preys on the local cats, who have dubbed him "Sharptooth".
• Papa Wolf:
  • Shellheart in Crookedstar's Promise is a Papa Cat, defending Crookedkit from his own mate. When she coldly tells him she blames her son for what happened to him, Shellheart is quick to defend him and breaks up with her. And when Rainflower tells Oakheart that Crookedstar would never be as good as him, Shellheart defends him with this:
  Shellheart: Can't you keep your thoughts to yourself, just once?
  • Graystripe himself shows this in The Darkest Hour, helping his kits flee from Nazi-like TigerClan and attacking any enemy warrior that tries to hurt them.
• Parental Abandonment: Sol's parents. Sol's father didn't like his mate, Cinders, or his kits; he rarely visited them, and brought them very little food. Eventually he ends up leaving them for a new mate who didn't complain as much as Cinders. Cinders, who also never particularly liked her kits, ended up abandoning them at different Twoleg homes.
• Parental Favoritism:
  • Crookedstar was the un-favorite of Rainflower, much to the dismay of him, his brother Oakheart, and their father Shellheart. All because he broke his jaw, thus "ruining his good looks." It takes a while for him to come to terms with it, but he eventually tells her that she would never make him ashamed of who he was.
  • Breezepelt feels like this at first, because his dad never pays attention to him (while not knowing he had more than one kit). So he starts working with the Dark Forest not only to destroy the Clans, but also to get revenge on Crowfeather.
  • It's strongly hinted that Brambleclaw is Tigerstar's favorite kit, despite them being on opposite sides.
  • Scourge (back then Tiny) believed his mother Quince liked Socks and Ruby more than him. Though it's hinted that she favors him over the others.
  • Brokenstar was this to his foster mother, Lizardstripe. Justified, as she didn't want kits in the first place, and accepted Brokenstar extremely reluctantly.
• Parental Neglect:
  • Crowfeather. The only reason he had Breezepelt was to get his Clan to forget about him running off with Leafpool, and it really shows in how well he treats his son.
  • Rainflower neglects Crookedstar at a young age just because he broke his jaw.
• Partially Civilized Animal: They're normal domestic cats living in an ordinary human world (well, normal aside from the fact that they can talk to each other and some can get nine lives), but they have their own society of four Clans in the forest with a firmly structured ranking order and rules, have a religion, and use healing herbs.
• Passing the Torch:
  • Halfway through Bluestar's Prophecy, Pinestar, leader of ThunderClan runs off to be a housecat and passes the torch to Sunfall.
  • Also, at the end of Sunrise, Leafpool is forced to give up being medicine cat and Jayfeather becomes medicine cat instead.
  • During the time of the Ancients, Furled Bracken stepped down as leader when the cats voted to leave the lake, so that Stone Song, who wanted to leave, could take the lead.
• Past-Life Memories: Cinderheart has memories of her past life as Cinderpelt, but she has only ever shown signs of remembering them in her dreams, or recalls her past life subconsciously; for example, Cinderpelt's former apprentice Leafpool notes Cinderheart flicks her paw in the same way Cinderpelt did, as well as another character once thinking she was acting Wise Beyond Her Years, and Cinderheart remembering the distance between the Great Sycamore and ThunderClan's camp in the Forest, even though she had been born after the Clans had left the Forest. Eventually she does recover all her memories of being Cinderpelt.
• Patricide:
  • Brokenstar killed his father in order to become leader - as deputy, he was Raggedstar's successor.
  • And like his son, Raggedstar killed his own dad, a kittypet named Hal.
• Personal Horror: Hollyleaf is a staunch follower of the warrior code. After finding out her birth broke the code, she feels horrified by what she is, which is worsened when her first reaction is to murder the cat threatening to reveal the secret of her and her siblings' parentage. The increasing realization her actions and her birth have betrayed everything she is leads her to end up revealing the same secret she killed to prevent coming out.
• Personal Raincloud: Discussed:
  Leafpool (to Jaypaw): You drift around the camp like a little dark cloud looking for someone to rain on.
• Perspective Flip: The series does this a few times: Bluestar's Prophecy, Crookedstar's Promise, Yellowfang's Secret, and Tallstar's Revenge all take place during roughly the same time frame, so there are several scenes seen from different points of view - for instance during battles, the cats who are launching a necessary preemptive attack in one book are seen as vicious invaders in the other. Later novellas and Super Editions repeat previous scenes in similar ways, and Battles of the Clans even has twin stories that show the aftermath of the same battle in two different Clans, to show that each battle fought has an impact on everyone involved and even on the future of each Clan.
• A Pet into the Wild: From Stray to Pet appears, but it is much more common for this to occur. The Clans look down upon "kittypets" (and it's against the Warrior Code to interact with humans and act like a kittypet), and thus it's rare for them to be taken in by humans permanently; however, many kittypets leave their owners to join the Clans.
  • The series starts out with a kittypet kitten named Rusty who finds his life as a pet bland and has dreams of being a stray cat. (Appropriately, the first book is named Into the Wild.) One day he ventures away from home and comes across three cats from ThunderClan. Due to Bluestar recognizing Rusty as being the cat who will likely fulfill a recent prophecy she has seen, she allows Rusty to join the Clan and renames him "Firepaw". Firepaw is renamed "Fireheart" once he finishes his warrior training and ultimately becomes "Firestar" when he becomes the new leader of ThunderClan.
  • Fireheart brought his nephew, Cloudtail, to ThunderClan as a young kit. His sister, Princess, wanted to choose what happened to her firstborn as she knew her owners would choose where her other kits went. Cloudtail was ostracized by others for his kittypet heritage but didn't even know he was adopted until he was almost of apprentice age.
  • Firestar's half brother Scourge was a kittypet named "Tiny", who fled his home after his sister told him that any kittens that humans didn't want were thrown into a river. Later on, Scourge's littermates Socks and Ruby, who had been adopted by Twolegs, became strays when their Twolegs abandoned them after moving away. The two begged their brother Scourge to take them in, but he chased them off. It's never clarified if Socks and Ruby were eventually adopted again or if they lived as loners for the rest of their lives.
  • Sasha's owner was sent to a nursing home. When she realized he wasn't coming back, she became a rogue cat.
  • Purdy became a rogue after his owner died.
  • Millie left her home to help Graystripe find ThunderClan and join it herself.
  • Many of New SkyClan were kittypets who left their homes to join the Clan.
  • Violet's kits were born as kittypets however they wanted to become warriors. Violet let Ravenpaw take them to New SkyClan.
• Pets Versus Strays: Many Clan cats dislike pet cats and even those that don't tend to look down upon the lifestyle as "soft". The anti-kittypet prejudice is so strong that some cats judge Cloudtail just for being born a kittypet, despite the fact he became a Clan cat at one month old and doesn't remember anything about being a pet. In turn, most kittypets fear Clan cats as vicious and wild, though a few look down upon them.
• Physical Therapy Plot:
  • After Cinderpaw breaks her leg, Jaypaw decides to try and heal her. She struggles to catch up to her siblings and after she hurts her leg a second time, he gets frustrated with Leafpool's approach to healing her. By now, Cinderpaw has become too cautious to move, so Jaypaw and has her exercise. He teaches her to swim in order to strengthen her leg, and by the end of the healing process, she has finally become a warrior.
  • Briarpaw breaks her spine after being crushed by a fallen tree. As Briarlight, she's managed to stay alive by doing constant physical exercises to keep herself strong, though emotionally she must now deal with a jealous sister and an overly-doting mother. She never fully heals, but finds a niche for herself by helping out with medicine cat duties.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: Many of the foreign publishers - including the Polish◊, Spanish◊, Ukranian◊, and Vietnamese◊ publishers - give the letter "O" in their logos a slitted pupil in the center to make it look like a cat's eye.
• Pilgrimage: As tradition, apprentices in the forest would all have to go on a trek to the faraway Mothermouth cave, hiding the sacred Moonstone where the Clans are able to contact StarClan, the ancestors of all four Clans. This was to receive the blessing of StarClan and to be exposed to the world beyond their Clan's borders.
• Pining After Protagonist's Parent: In the third arc Power of Three, Ashfur was in love with Squirrelfight, the mother of the sibling protagonists. His anger at her for breaking up with him leads him to try to kill the protagonists.
• Pintsized Powerhouse:
  • Scourge. Despite his small size he rips Tigerstar's stomach open, killing him nine times. He also manages to kill the main character of the series, and is so badass that he leads a legion of cats that would never dare to question him.
  • Any apprentice who's worth their salt in battle counts, particularly Thistlepaw from Bluestar's Prophecy. He fought a dog. And won.
• Pitiful Worms: A hilarious example in which a young apprentice makes up a weird dream that goes something like this "I was walking through the forest and ShadowClan cats were EVERYWHERE! And the river was running with blood, THUNDERCLAN BLOOD! I went to tell somebody in the camp but there were no ThunderClan warriors anywhere and a ShadowClan cat is all like 'We can crush ThunderClan, because ThunderClan are no more powerful than a swarm of beetles, and beetles can be crushed.'"
• The Plague:
  • Greencough, a deadly, contagious pneumonia-like sickness.
  • An unnamed sickness that crops up in ShadowClan from them eating rats (later referred to as ShadowClan's Great Sickness): it only comes once in a great while and wipes out a good chunk of the Clan, and it doesn't have a cure until Cinderpelt discovers one.
• Playing Possum: One of Firestar's favorite moves. When in an enemy's grasp, he goes limp, making the enemy think he or she has won. Then when they're least suspecting it, he strikes!
• Please Wake Up:
  • Bluepaw (young Bluestar) does this in Bluestar's Prophecy when her mother Moonflower is killed by Hawkheart in the attack on the WindClan camp. The sequence is made even more heartbreaking when Bluepaw must relay the news to her sister Snowpaw.
  • Done again in The Last Hope, when Ferncloud is killed. One of the kits wonders what happened, and another one tells them not to worry, that Ferncloud is only asleep and that Dustpelt will wake her up. At this point, Dustpelt is begging Ferncloud not to leave him.
• Plot Hole: At one point Yellowfang knows nothing about the Dark Forest's plan to destroy the forest, despite telling Jayfeather about it in the previous book.
• Plot-Triggering Death: In Into the Wild, Redtail and Oakheart, the deputies of ThunderClan and RiverClan respectively, are killed in a very early battle. Fireheart, main character of the first arc, spends the next three books trying to prove that the celebrated ThunderClan warrior Tigerclaw actually murdered Redtail, while uncovering Oakheart's dark secrets and connections to the other Clans.
• Plucky Comic Relief:
  • Graystripe is only in the first book to lighten the mood. However, his role greatly increases in later books.
  • Purdy serves as this once he joins ThunderClan.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Squirrelflight and Leafpool, especially when they're apprentices. Squirrelflight is sharp-tongued and energetic, and becomes a warrior, while Leafpool is calm and more reasonable, and becomes a medicine cat. They're even compared directly to fire and water once.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Tigerstar, as well as his #1 follower, Darkstripe. Tigerstar parallels Hitler in several ways, and has attempted genocide in the form of public executions during a propaganda rally where he called halfClan cats "filth". Although probably the most flagrant example, it certainly isn't the only one.
• Polyamory: Smoky lives in a barn with, and is mates with, both Daisy and Floss (who happen to be sisters), and both of them bear his kits. The two she-cats are fine with it, although Daisy feels that he always did like Floss a bit better.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Achilles' Heel in Bramblestar and Squirrelflight's relationship. If Brambleclaw had explained to Squirrelflight why he wanted to be friends with Hawkfrost, or if she'd asked instead of jumping to conclusions, their quarrel in the second half of The New Prophecy would never have happened; if Squirrelflight had simply trusted him with the secret of Lionblaze, Jayfeather and Hollyleaf not being their biological children, their break-up in Omen of the Stars would never have happened; if she hadn't assumed Bramblestar not wanting more kits as much as she does in Squirrelflight's Hope means he doesn't love her, their fight there wouldn't have happened...
• Position of Literal Power: When a cat becomes leader of their Clan, they get nine lives from StarClan.
• Posthumous Character: The series has StarClan, so cats that die usually aren't gone gone. Though they do eventually fade away. Yellowfang and Spottedleaf, for example, probably did more in the series dead than while alive. Also, Redtail and Oakheart are surprisingly important, and things they did before dying are very important in the original series.
• Posthumous Sibling: Plenty of examples, since life in the forest is dangerous and couples often have multiple litters in the books. For instance:
  • Graystripe has three kits with his new mate, Millie, a few years after his daughter Feathertail died.
  • Dustpelt and Ferncloud have several litters of kits. Shrewpaw from their first litter and Larchkit and Hollykit of their second litter are dead by the time that Icecloud and Foxleap are born.
  • Sorreltail's kits Molepaw and Honeyfern have died before Lilyheart and Seedpaw are born.
  • Birchface and Frecklewish die in Mapleshade's Vengeance, long before their half brother Pinestar is born; this is mentioned in Pinestar's Choice.
• Practically Different Generations: A number of characters have siblings younger than their own kids. Justified, due to cats never going through menopause and having shorter childhoods compared to humans, along with being able to have kits at any point in their life.
• Pragmatic Hero: The series features violent fights, tough decisions, and cats betraying the warrior's code, but some of the cats implicated do it for the right reasons.
• Practically Different Generations: This is common in the Clans as cats age quickly, with cats becoming adults at roughly twelve moons old.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • In Moonrise, Leafpool exclaims "Mouse dung!" (which is essentially the cat equivalent of "Dammit!") shortly after failing to catch a mouse. She never really pseudo-swears at all, and is usually polite, so it was likely done to convey how ThunderClan has been affected by the extreme shortage of prey and how desperate they are for food.
  • Tallstar refusing Tigerstar's demands and publicly calling him a "piece of foxdung" ("piece of shit") in The Darkest Hour seems to carry more weight, being said by the stereotypically calm and respectful WindClan leader, and only makes it more of a Moment of Awesome for him.
• Predecessor Villain: Thistleclaw. He was the mentor of Tigerstar, the Arch-Enemy of Firestar's mentor Bluestar, and the cause of many major events in the series (such as the rise of Scourge, although he wasn't intending that). The Prequel Crookedstar's Promise gives Thistleclaw his own Predecessor Villain in the form of Silverhawk,^note Or maybe it's Shredtail. Nobody is really sure on this. who mentored Thistleclaw in the Dark Forest, and caused him to turn from an Anti-Hero into a full-fledged villain.
• Pregnant Badass: In Into the Wild, Brindleface is noted as being very close to having her kits, but still fighting as hard as she can to defend the Clan when their camp is attacked.
• Pregnant Hostage:
  • Breezepelt does this to Poppyfrost, a heavily pregnant she-cat, and even threatens to kill her to frame Jayfeather. Surprisingly, it's not Poppyfrost's mate who saves her but Jayfeather and a deceased Honeyfern, who was Poppyfrost's sister.
  • Path of Stars involves a rogue named Slash holding the pregnant Star Flower hostage.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: One notable example is Firestar's final line before killing Tigerstar's spirit in The Last Hope:
  Firestar: You lived like a rogue. You can die like a rogue!
• Prepare to Die: Brokentail shouts "Prepare to die!" at a bunch of rats at the end of a chapter in Yellowfang's Secret when the ShadowClan cats attack them.
• Prequel: Bluestar's Prophecy, Crookedstar's Promise, Yellowfang's Secret, and Tallstar's Revenge all take place about two generations before the original series. Dawn of the Clans, the fifth series, and Moth Flight's Vision, a Super Edition about a Dawn of the Clans character, take place at the Clans' beginning, long before the other prequels. Code of the Clans spans almost the entire length of time the Clans have existed up until Bluestar's time.
• Pressure Point: In Path of Stars, Slash's rogues use a technique that involves them hitting exactly the right spot on a cat's limb to temporarily numb it and gain the advantage.
• Prevent the War: in Dark River, WindClan and ThunderClan nearly go to war over three missing WindClan kits, and Hollypaw, Lionpaw, Jaypaw, Breezepaw and Heatherpaw team up to rescue them from the tunnels and bring them back in time to stop the battle.
• The Promise:
  • Crookedstar's Promise centers around one. A mysterious spirit cat asks the main character, as a kit, to promise to be loyal to his Clan above all else, even his own desires. Naturally, he promises, since he can't imagine not being loyal. Turns out that she meant that he can't take a mate or anything of the sort, and she definitely didn't have his or the Clan's best intentions at heart.
  • In Onestar's Confession, Onewhisker makes an empty promise to Smoke and Darkkit that he'll come back for them after the Clans find their new home. This ends up haunting him for most of his life, and finally he does go back to the forest, but by that point, it's too late: Smoke has died, and Darktail has grown up with a hatred for his father and the Clans.
• The Promised Land:
  • The oldest known group of cats lived around a lake, but human construction work made prey scarce and life difficult. Jayfeather/Jay's Wing promises them that there is good land for them in the mountains; he knows this because he's traveling back into the past and knows that the Tribe of Rushing Water lives in the mountains later and realizes that these cats would become the Tribe.
  • In the Dawn of the Clans prequel arc, the Tribe is starving because they are overpopulated for the prey that lives in the mountains. Stoneteller, the Tribe's leader, has a dream of a prey-filled land that lies in the direction of the rising sun. About half the Tribe leaves to follow "the Sun Trail" and find this land, which is the forest that the Clans live in at the start of the series.
  • In the The New Prophecy arc of the main series, the Clans - having lived in the forest for countless years - are struggling because the forest is being destroyed by humans. Midnight promises them that there's a place for them to live with oak forests and streams and plenty of prey, and when they leave on their journey, their ancestors give them a sign to show them which way to go. This was actually the original forest that the first group of cats started in, but it no longer has extra human activity and has perfect territory for each Clan.
• The Prophecy: The series centers around these.
  • The first series has Fire alone can save our Clan, referring to the main character and his, uh, potential to save his Clan.
  • The second series has two main prophecies. The first is Darkness, air, water and sky will come together and shake the forest to its roots. Nothing will be as it is now, nor as it has been before., foretelling the destruction of the forest by humans. The second is Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red, about a character killing his half brother, who would have otherwise caused inter-Clan bloodshed.
  • The third and fourth series follow the same prophecy - There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws - about three relatives of the character the prophecy is made to, and the fact that they are each born with a supernatural power. In The Fourth Apprentice, one of them points out that the third cat in the "three" prophecy has arrived: After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove's gentle wing.
  • The sixth series has Embrace what you find in the shadows, for only they can clear the sky. It talks about the Clans finding SkyClan and bringing them back to the lake to restore its rightful place as the fifth Clan.
  • Even one of the Expanded Universe books has its own prophecy: Like fire, you will blaze through the forest. But beware! Even the most powerful flames can be destroyed by water.
• Prophecy Pileup: This being a series with lots of prophecies, does this a couple times.
  • The second series revolves around a prophecy meaning that the forest will be destroyed - one cat from each Clan is chosen to go on a journey to learn how the Clans can survive. (The four do go on the journey, along with two others who chose to come along as well.) This overlaps with two other prophecies:
    • Shortly before the journeying cats leave, when the heat sets a bush on fire, Cinderpelt has a vision of a tiger leaping in the flames. She determines that it refers to Squirrelpaw (daughter of Firestar) and Brambleclaw (son of Tigerstar), and destruction to the forest; they think that it could possibly mean that the two young cats could somehow cause this destruction. The "destruction to the forest" is the same as the original prophecy, and the fire and tiger mean that Squirrelpaw and Brambleclaw will have something to do with it - they save the Clan from being destroyed when the forest is.
    • The Tribe of Rushing Water has a prophecy that they will be saved by a silver cat. This cat is believed to be Stormfur, especially since he wasn't actually one of the prophecy cats chosen to go on the journey - he just came along to protect his sister Feathertail, the chosen RiverClan cat. The Tribe's prophecy is actually referring to Feathertail, so she's the subject of two prophecies.
  • The main prophecy of the third series is "There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws." Throughout the third series, Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf are sure that they are the three - after all, Jayfeather has the ability to walk in other cats' dreams, and Lionblaze can fight without getting hurt. At the end of the series, after Hollyleaf's apparent death, Jayfeather realizes it could refer to one of Whitewing's newborn kits, since they too are Firestar's kin, and Hollyleaf never had a power emerge.
    • Yellowfang speaks a prophecy to Dovepaw to reveal her as the third cat in the "power of three" prophecy: "After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove's gentle wing."
    • And then a third prophecy gets piled on towards the end of the Omen of the Stars arc: "The end of the stars draws near. Three must become four to battle the darkness that lasts forever." The "fourth" cat is Firestar, who doesn't really do much in regards to the prophecy, but he does end up making the Big Bad of the entire Warriors series, Tigerstar, Deader than Dead.
• Prophecy Twist: Used several times:
  • "Fire alone will save our Clan" — The "fire" is Firepaw/heart/star, which, while obvious to the readers, wasn't understood by the main character until he was told by Bluestar before her death.
  • "Four will become two, lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest" — The four is referring to the four Clans, the lion and tiger are LionClan and TigerClan, the two factions they split into, and blood is BloodClan.
  • "Blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red" — The first blood is in terms of family, meaning Brambleclaw and Hawkfrost.
  • The twistiest one was probably the prophecy from the first half of the second series: it concerned "Fire and Tiger coming together", somehow related to "Danger to the forest." Firestar and the others interpret this as Firestar's daughter Squirrelpaw and Tigerstar's son Brambleclaw causing great danger to the forest. Only after their meddling drives the two cats away together, do they realize that the prophecy most likely meant that the two would save the forest from this danger. Oops.
  • "There will be three, kin of your kin, with the power of the stars in their paws" — The "three" does not refer to Firestar's three grandkits Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf - at least, not entirely. Hollyleaf is dropped from the prophecy entirely in favor of one of Firestar's nephew's daughter's kits. And only ONE of the kits.
• Prophet Eyes: Blind Seer Jayfeather is often drawn this way in fanart and he appears like this on the reprinted cover and on several foreign edition covers, even though in the books he's described as having rather normal eyes. Rock, on the other hand, has "sightless eyes" mentioned in his physical description, so we can assume the only way a cat could tell by sight that another is blind is because the blind cat has eyes that look like this.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The Rise of Scourge is about how a cute little kitten named Tiny became Scourge, ruler of BloodClan and Evil Counterpart to The Hero Firestar.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Just about all of the Clan cats at one point or another, but probably ShadowClan most of all, considering how often their pride is pointed out. They consider themselves to be superior to pretty much any cat that doesn't live in a Clan. Even then, they generally consider their birth Clan to be better than the other three. Outsiders who have joined Clans often have to deal with prejudice against them due to not being "Clanborn".
• Psychic Dreams for Everyone:
  • Every medicine cat gets messages from StarClan, actually.
  • And Firestar, or any of the other Chosen Ones.
    • The Warriors app reveals that his mother had one before he was born. Maybe it runs in the family?
• Public Execution: Stonefur's death as a consequence of being half-Clan and refusing to kill his apprentice and apprentice's littermate. It is carried out in front of all of TigerClan (RiverClan and ShadowClan combined).
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: In the Code of the Clans short story where White-eye and Dappletail try fishing, Pinestar tells them "We. Don't. Eat. Fish."
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Subverted, then averted in Dawn of the Clans. Gray Wing acts as a mentor and father figure to Thunder, his nephew. The reason behind this is because Clear Sky (Thunder's father) was slowly turning into a cruel Anti-Villain . When Gray Wing allows Thunder to visit him, Clear Sky claims custody of his son, who was young and naïve, and decides to mentor him. Gray Wing is powerless against this, and fears that Thunder would be influenced and turn cruel. Averted when Thunder deserts and disowns Clear Sky, seeing the error of his ways. Clear Sky eventually regains his senses, and the three (sort of) make up.
• Puppy Love: In Power of Three, Lionpaw and Heatherpaw (who are both young apprentices) become friends and begin to sneak away at night to play with each other, and they start to realize that they have actual feelings for each other.
• Purgatory and Limbo:
  • The Dark Forest was originally treated as a purgatory for warriors that betray the Warrior Code. They would wander alone in a cold, starless forest. Later books stray from this idea.
  • The sixth arc introduces ghosts, where dead cats who have Unfinished Business with the living wander, and are unable to cross to the afterlife until they have completed a task. Only a select few cats from a group called the Sisters are able to see the ghosts, and can make other cats without this power see them for a short amount of time. In the seventh arc, since Ashfur's blocked off StarClan, all cats who've died recently are stuck as ghosts until StarClan's connection with the Clans is restored.
• Put on a Bus: Graystripe gets captured by Twolegs early in Dawn and is ultimately presumed dead or permanently lost by his Clanmates, especially since they have moved out of the forest since he went missing. (He returns over half a year and several books later, having escaped and found them in their new home.)
• Put Their Heads Together: In the third volume of the Ravenpaw's Path, Bramblepaw smashes together the heads of two BloodClan cats as Ravenpaw, Barley, and ThunderClan fight to re-take the barn.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The chosen cats from The New Prophecy join back together to scout the lake in Starlight and to help the tribe in Outcast.

Q

• The Quest: Several in the series:
  • The most prominent one is at the start of the second arc, The New Prophecy: a group of Chosen Ones (plus two tagalong friends), following a prophecy, quest through unknown territory to follow the setting sun to the sea and "listen to what midnight tells them".
  • Outcast: After two Tribe cats come to the lake asking for the Clan cats' help, a group travels to the mountains to see what they can do.
  • The Sun Trail: Half the Tribe leaves to find a new home.
  • The Apprentice's Quest: The book is named after this. A group of cats travels to find SkyClan after Alderpaw has an omen about the lost Clan being in trouble.
  • Firestar's Quest: Another book named after the major quest: Firestar must travel far out of Clan territory to rebuild a lost Clan that disbanded seasons ago.
• Quicksand Sucks: A few mud examples are seen, such as in The Fourth Apprentice and Mothwing's Secret, which both take place during droughts and involve cats trying to cross land that would normally be covered by water. While neither resulted in a death, both were life-threatening events and required the help of others to escape.
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad:
  • Brokenstar's rogues, who show up several times for scraps against the heroes.
  • The BloodClan warriors under Scourge's command, who each have a few personality quirks and hang around in the manga arcs.
  • The Dark Forest warriors, who exist to flesh out the Dark Forest and serve as climactic fights during The Last Hope.
• Quit Your Whining: Graystripe is with his mate as she dies giving birth to his kits, and he wails his grief to the skies. Cue Tigerclaw coming along, cuffing him, and ordering him to "Stop that moaning".

R

• Rage Against the Heavens: Bluestar attempts to after Tigerclaw betrays her—the bad luck that ThunderClan receives afterwards causes her to declare war on her ancestors. She comes around when she sees her cats risking their lives for their Clanmates and realizes that they are not traitors after all, and sacrifices herself to save Fireheart. She dies peacefully, reconciled with both her children and StarClan.
• Raised by Rival: Firestar takes Bramblepaw on as his apprentice following Tigerstar's exile from the Clan and ensuing takeover of ShadowClan. Despite caring deeply about Bramblepaw, Firestar struggles to separate the innocent apprentice from his evil, look-alike father, something Bramblepaw notices and resents.
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: Purdy does this frequently. Fans love it, characters get annoyed by it.
  Purdy: Do you ever miss hunting?
  Mousefur: As much as you would miss talking if your tongue fell out!
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Clan leaders almost always tend to be good fighters. Having nine lives while other cats have only one is definitely an advantage too.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": In Bluestar's Prophecy, Bluepaw has a moment where she thinks "Shut up! Shut up!" when Sunfall starts to confront her about her antisocial, suicidally reckless behavior.
• Rash Promise: In "Crookedstar's Promise", Crookedkit agrees to promise Mapleshade that he will always put RiverClan first. As a kit, this just seemed like something obvious, and the issues with such a promise didn't become apparent until later... when his loyalty to RiverClan meant he'd lose everyone and everything he loved in the process.
• Rat King: In Firestar's Quest, SkyClan is threatened to be wiped out by a swarm of rats. Firestar realizes that the rats have a leader, which is more intelligent than the others: it is able to speak Cat, and give commands to all the other rats. Once he kills the leader, the rest of the rats have nothing to command them, and they scatter.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Willowpelt had been with three different toms altogether: Patchpelt (her own brother, though it wasn't intentional on the authors' part), Tawnyspots, and Whitestorm.
  • Clear Sky also had kits with three different she-cats: Bright Stream (though their unborn kits perished with her), Storm, and Star Flower.
• Really 17 Years Old: In the first book, Lionheart asks a ShadowClan apprentice how old he is because he seems unusually small. The apprentice claims that he's six moons and that his mother is small too, but as it turns out he's actually only three moons, only half the age he's supposed to be to start training as a warrior. With the murderous Brokenstar as ShadowClan's leader, it's no wonder that he would be afraid of revealing that his leader was breaking the warrior code.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Plenty of leaders from the series. Bluestar almost always made the best decision, including asking Firepaw to track down Yellowfang before Tigerclaw would do so and execute her, on the chance that Yellowfang was innocent. Firestar was always willing to listen and was even-tempered in dealing with the other Clans, and was considered one of the most noble leaders the forest has ever seen. Tallstar was very friendly to Firestar and his Clan, and willing to trust him.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Clear Sky gives Jagged Peak a cruel and unprovoked one in Thunder Rising, calling him selfish and lazy. Gray Wing, however, is quick to defend their little brother, and Jagged Peak gives Clear Sky one for kicking him out of the forest.
  • In After the Flood, Leafstar gives one to Sol in After The Flood when he steals her kits just so he could "rescue" them and become a warrior.
  Sol: I'm always overlooked! Never made leader of a patrol...always scorned because I used to be a kittypet! I can be a warrior!
  Leafstar: No. You can't. You have no understanding of the warrior code at all. What you've done here proves it. You've risked the lives of young kits...by leaving them alone here. Anything could have happened to them. They could have been lost. They could have died. My kits could have died. But you didn't just betray me. You betrayed the entire Clan. You did all this...and you never considered how it would make any of us feel. The Clan is a family, Sol. A community. And you're incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself. I banish you from SkyClan. You've betrayed my trust, betrayed the warrior code...betrayed everything I thought you believed in.
  • Also in After the Flood, Sol gives TWO of these in response to the one Leafstar gave him. The first is to Billystorm about being a daylight warrior, only for Billystorm to retort that he's moving into the gorge from now on with his Clan, so then he gives the second to SkyClan for thinking that the warrior code could keep them safe forever.
  • Squirrelflight gives one to Jayfeather in Fading Echoes after he treats her and Leafpool like crap for two books straight.
  • In Night Whispers, after Ivypool pushes one too many of her sister Dovewing's Berserk Buttons, Dovewing tells Ivypool exactly why she thinks Ivypool is a terrible cat who deserves to rot in the deepest corners of the Dark Forest for all eternity.
  • Redwillow gives one to Blackstar in The Last Hope, sneering that he's just old and should die. Blackstar shuts him up by calling him a traitor and killing him.
• Red/Green Contrast: Yew berries - which the cats call "deathberries" due to how poisonous they are - are almost always described specifically as being bright red against the dark green of the bushes. Leafpool even says in one book, "These berries are evil."
• Red Herring Shirt: Tigerclaw was a random prologue character in Into the Wild. Fans now know him as the Big Bad.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Squirrelflight and Leafpool, anyone? Squirrelflight's the "red", while Leafpool's the "blue". Their personalities are even compared to fire and water once.
• Red Shirt: Even though the series has a strict Anyone Can Die policy (and how), the seldom seen Tribe of Rushing Water in particular is made up of about 75% Red Shirts, who get killed off in bunches pretty much anytime the Tribe is featured in a book.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: In Fire and Ice, the morning that WindClan arrives home, their medicine cat, Barkface, announces that the clouds are stained with blood, and the day will bring an unnecessary death. This comes true when Fireheart and Graystripe head home — rather than taking the long way around RiverClan territory to get home like they're supposed to, they take a shortcut through it. A patrol spots them and starts a fight, and one of the RiverClan warriors dies when he falls into the gorge.
• Reformed Criminal: Blackstar. After doing things against the warrior code (stealing kits from another Clan, killing other cats needlessly), he lived as a rogue for a while, but eventually rejoined the Clan, became its leader, and hasn't done anything like that since.
• Regretful Traitor: Hollyleaf murdered Ashfur to avoid him revealing to the Clans that she's the product of a forbidden relationship, and later fled the Clan and was believed to be dead. There is a novella that documents her life outside the Clan as she begins to regret her actions and forgive her birth mother, but feels that she cannot return, so she tries to help from afar by leaving them medicinal herbs and prey. Eventually she does return, after saving the lives of some ThunderClanners.
• Reincarnation: Cinderpelt is reincarnated as her own niece, Cinderheart, who was born at the same instant Cinderpelt was killed defending the mother from a badger. She was given a second chance at life because the first time around, she was caught in the villain's trap and injured by a car, preventing her from becoming a warrior. Cinderheart eventually lives Past-Life Memories in her dreams, and realizes who she is.
• Rejected Apology: After being bullied by Clear Sky in Dawn Of The Clans, Jagged Peak refuses to accept Clear Sky's apology after Gray Wing tells him off.
• Remember the Dead: Spirits stay in StarClan or the Dark Forest until they become completely forgotten by all other cats (dead or alive). Once they're forgotten, they fade. What happens when they fade is uncertain. They either turn into stars and live peacefully by themselves from thereon, become part of a second StarClan, or they stop existing period.
• Remember the New Guy?: In Moonrise, six Tribe cats were sent to deal with the mountain lion, Sharptooth. The Clan cats meet three of them: Talon, Bird, and Rock, who explain that the other three had been killed by Sharptooth. In the next book, the Clans return to the Tribe, and there's a fourth cat, Jag, listed as being one of the ones originally sent to fight Sharptooth, with no explanation as to why we didn't see him in the last book (though the characters do recognize him and say they'd met him before).
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: A variation. In Thunder and Shadow, Dovewing freaks out upon hearing that a group of hostile rogues have been spotted in Clan territory, because her sister Ivypool is out hunting with Fernsong and is unaware of the threat. She is quickly reassured when someone points out that if Ivypool could survive the Dark Forest, she'd have no problem handling a couple of rogues.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: In Battles of the Clans, Tigerstar remembers how fun it was when he killed Redtail.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: It is considered to be a huge honor to be mentored by the Clan leader or, to a lesser degree, the deputy. It occurs only a couple times in the series, most notably in the first book when Bluestar chooses Firepaw as her apprentice. It is also considered an honor to train as the medicine cat's apprentice, because it is such an important position; each medicine cat only trains one apprentice in their lifetime. In that case, however, it usually isn't a surprise because the younger cat typically already has an interest in healing and may even help out the medicine cat for a while before officially being apprenticed.
• Repetitive Name: Two characters with names like this are Twigbranch and Blazefire. Twigbranch's name, at least, was chosen for a reason: "Twig" came from her being "as tiny as a twig" when they found her as a kit, while "branch" was chosen as the suffix of her warrior name to represent how much she's grown up.
• Replacement Flat Character: Darkstripe served as the Butt-Monkey until he died at the end of the first arc. When his spirit returned to seek vengeance along with the other villains in the fourth arc, Darkstripe had managed to grow stronger because of all the abuse he had suffered and he actually posed a credible threat. Because of this, another villain called Snowtuft was introduced to be the Butt-Monkey, and got pushed around and beaten up by the other characters in all but one of his appearances.
• Rerouted from Heaven: When Flametail dies and goes to StarClan, he ends up lost and winds up in the Dark Forest. The Dark Forest cats are planning war on the Clans, so Brokenstar orders Ivypool to prove her loyalty by killing Flametail's spirit.
• Rescue Romance:
  • Silverstream rescues Graystripe from drowning, and he's barely out of the water before he's flirting with her. Bonus points for being Star-Crossed Lovers.
  • Firestar stopped Sandstorm from falling into the gorge, and it was from then that they began to grow close.
  • Crowfeather managed to save Leafpool from falling off a cliff, and he immediately confesses his love to her afterward.
  • Rootpaw gets a crush on Bristlefrost after she saves him from drowning.
• The Resenter:
  • Ivypool is jealous of all the attention Dovewing has been getting from the older warriors and Firestar himself...though she's never realized her sister's powers yet. When she's told the truth, she's not happy at first about being lied to, but then she promises to help Dovewing out whenever she can.
  • Tigerstar reveals during his and Firestar's Final Battle that he became nothing the moment Firestar joined the Clan. Thus, he had waited for so long to get vengeance on his rival.
• Resignations Not Accepted: The Dark Forest. Beetlewhisker tries to leave, but Brokenstar kills him.
• Resigned to the Call: The Three feel this way about being The Chosen Ones several times, but Dovewing more than the other two.
• Resurrective Immortality: Zigzagged. Leaders have nine lives, so they can come back from being killed, but their ninth death is permanent. As well, they can still die from old age, and some things are powerful enough to take multiple lives, such as Scourge's organ shredding blow in The Darkest Hour and Leopardstar's diabetes in Fading Echoes.
• Retcon:
  • Ever since the first book in the series, Blackstar has had black paws. However, as of Sign of the Moon, he only has one black paw.
  • Bluestar's Prophecy and Crookedstar's Promise were set in the same timeline. In one shared scene between the two books, in a Gathering, the cats' dialogue was retconned to reference an event in Crookedstar's Promise (which was the later released of the two).
  • The founding leaders' names got retconned several times. The first book mentioning the founding leaders, Secrets of the Clans, referred to them with proper Clan names after becoming leaders: Thunderstar, Shadowstar, and so on. When they appeared in later books such as Long Shadows without the "star" on their name, it was retconned that the "star" part in Clan leaders' names came later on and that the founding leaders were actually just named "Thunder", "Shadow", and so forth, and that they only got called "Thunderstar"/etc to show them respect. And even later, in Dawn of the Clans, it's revealed that, aside from Thunder, that's only part of their name: Shadow's actual name is Tall Shadow, River's is River Ripple, and Wind's is Wind Runner. Then it was retconned again that they were given the "star" names (and the nine lives that go with them) a few seasons after the Clans officially formed.
  • Secrets of the Clans, the first official guidebook, states very clearly that there were originally four Clans. In Firestar's Quest, published later that year, it's revealed that there were originally five Clans. All material published after the release of Firestar's Quest, including the other guidebooks, also says there were five to begin with; this includes the whole series about the origins of the Clans. The authors did want to include it, but it would have spoiled Firestar's Quest. Somewhat justified, as Secrets of the Clans was essentially a collection of stories told by elders after the second arc—and by the time those stories were told, nobody remembered that the fifth Clan had ever existed.
• Retroactive Precognition: In Long Shadows, a bunch of characters are shocked when the time-traveling main character tells them where humans will build a barn and that off in the mountains there's a place they can live. Turns out that he's just speaking from his own experiences; he's far in the past.
• Retronym:
  • The first set of six was called simply Warriors, but that became the series name altogether. To distinguish the first six from the rest, fans referred to them as "the first arc", or "the original series". When it was reprinted with new covers in 2015, it was given the official title The Prophecies Begin.
  • The Graystripe manga trilogy originally never had its own trilogy subtitle like the others. A boxed set of his three, and later the full-color re-release, named the trilogy Graystripe's Adventure.
• Returning Big Bad: Tigerstar is killed at the end of the first series. However, he returns to the books in the latter half of the second series, visiting his sons Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw in their dreams and trying to get them to follow his plans; ultimately, by the time of Omen of the Stars, his spirit is able to physically fight living cats and he faces The Hero Firestar once more.
• Revenge Reveal Story: At the end of Crookedstar's Promise, Mapleshade tells her story: her mate had cheated on her while she was pregnant with his kits, and then blamed her for their deaths when her Clan had exiled her and she tried to bring them across the river to him. She reveals that the reason she's been tormenting Crookedstar is because she wants revenge on her ex-mate and his bloodline, and Crookedstar is her mate's great-grandson by the other she-cat.
• Rewatch Bonus: When rereading the series you notice all sorts of foreshadowing that you'd have missed the first time, especially with the original series and Power of Three. For the original series, this includes things such as, Yellowfang's affair with Raggedstar, the true parentage of Mistyfoot and Stonefur, and Tigerclaw trying to get his apprentice killed. If you reread Power of Three after finishing the series you notice that the whole thing with Leafpool was really obvious.
• Rewrite: Secrets of the Clans explained how the Clans formed and said that the warrior code was created by the four founding leaders. In the following years, they came out with more story arcs and special editions and heavily expanded on the world, leading the authors to declare parts of it Canon Discontinuity. Code of the Clans shows that the warrior code formed over time in response to difficult situations rather than being established by the Clan founders. Dawn of the Clans, the fifth series, is about how the Clans formed, and the authors have said to consider the Secrets of the Clans story as an elders' tale.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Moonrise involves a mountain-lion-like cat based on rumors of big cats roaming the British countryside which come up in the news every few years (the "sightings" usually involve panther-like cats said to have escaped from zoos or circuses, and their accuracy is debatable). There was a particular influx of these articles around the mid-2000s when Moonrise was written.
• Rite of Passage: Quite a few - apprenticeship represents the end of childhood, and becoming a warrior is a mark of adulthood. Getting your first apprentice is also a meaningful and awaited mark, since it allows a cat to become a deputy. Pretty much any time there is a ceremony going on, it's a rite of passage.
• Rite-of-Passage Name Change: The cats have the suffix of their name changed with each stage in their growth, from -kit to -paw to a new unique suffix warriors can earn. Leaders earn the suffix -star.
• Rival Turned Evil: Breezepelt was originally the rival to Lionblaze and Jayfeather, but he was friendly enough to team up with them on occasion. However, in Omen of the Stars he is recruited by the Dark Forest and turns homicidal.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • In Sunrise, Hollyleaf freaks out at learning her true parentage and exposes her mother's greatest secret. Then, she attempts to kill her mother, before running away into some tunnels.
  • After Ashfur's rejection by Squirrelflight, he plots to have her father killed and her mate framed for his death, which fails when her mate saves her father. Then he tries to kill her kits, only giving up when he learns that they're not hers and that he'll hurt her more by revealing that she lied. Later on, he possesses her mate's body and tries to destroy all the Clans, as well as StarClan, just to hurt her for rejecting him.
  • After Onewhisker abandoned Smoke and Darkkit and never made good on his promise to come back for him - and then Smoke died when the two were living as rogues - Darktail blamed Onewhisker and was determined to get revenge against him: first by threatening his kin and killing some of his Clanmates, and later by trying to destroy the Clans and working his way toward Onestar and WindClan.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Kind of. Rats are basically just normal-sized rats, but are fearsome and universally loathed by cats. And, of course, rats are much bigger compared to cats than to humans. The authors also have joked that the badgers on the cover of Twilight look like Rodents of Unusual Size.
• Role Swap Plot: At the start of Power of Three, Jaypaw is determined to become a warrior, while Hollypaw wants to be an important member of the Clan and starts training as a medicine cat. Partway through the book, Jaypaw accepts that his blindness is too much of a disability to hunt or fight and that he has a special connection with StarClan, while Hollypaw struggles with healing and realizes that she longs to be a warrior, so they end up being allowed to swap roles.
• Romantic False Lead: Ashfur in Twilight.
• Romantic Runner-Up: Again, Ashfur, when Squirrelflight passes him over in favor of Brambleclaw.
• Rotating Protagonist:
  • In The New Prophecy, each book features the POV of Leafpool and one of the main cast (Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Stormfur, or Feathertail).
  • In Power of Three, the point of view switches between Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf.
  • Omen of the Stars rotates between Lionblaze, Jayfeather, Dovewing, and Ivypool, and also Flametail for one book.
  • Dawn of the Clans switches between Gray Wing, Thunder, and Clear Sky.
  • A Vision of Shadows starts with Alderheart, and then rotates between him, Twigbranch, and Violetshine.
  • The Broken Code rotates between Bristlefrost, Shadowsight, and Rootspring.
  • A Starless Clan switches between Frostpaw of RiverClan, Nightheart of ThunderClan, and Sunbeam of ShadowClan.
• Rouge Angles of Satin:
  • There are plenty of typos in the books, but some of the fan favorites are Ravenpaw being called "Ravepaw" in A Dangerous Path, and the fresh-kill pile being called the "fresh-kill pie" in Crookedstar's Promise.
  • "Rogue" is a term that is used regularly in the series. Cue bad fanfiction authors spelling it wrong all the time. Also expect to occasionally find people asking others what their favourite "arch" is, or what "cannon" pairings they like. The most frequently misspelled names, meanwhile, are probably "Scrouge" (Scourge) and "Loinblaze" (Lionblaze), while the most commonly misspelled title is The Sun Trail (which often gets misspelled as The Sun Trial).
• Rule of Cool: Scourge wears a collar with dog teeth sticking out of it. It's uncomfortable, but he wears it because he knows it's awesome.
• Rule of Three: The third series, Power of Three, with three protagonists.
• Ruler Protagonist: Quite a few of the books revolve around a Clan leader as the protagonist. For instance:
  • The Darkest Hour is when Firestar first becomes ThunderClan's leader. We see how leaders' nine lives work, and Firestar has to deal with decisions that affect the lives of his Clanmates and the whole forest.
  • In Firestar's Quest, Firestar has to decide whether it's the right thing to do to leave his Clan and possibly risk his life on a long journey to restore another, long-lost Clan. His experience in leading a Clan serves him well in bringing cats together and training their new leader.
  • In SkyClan's Destiny, Leafstar struggles with the possibility that her deputy might be trying to undermine her, as well as with the strictness of the Clans' warrior code; the book ends with her deciding that the law "The word of the Clan leader is the warrior code" means that rather than having to stick strictly to all the rules of the code, she has the right to be flexible and change the code for what works for her own Clan. SkyClan and the Stranger shows the result of this, with Leafstar balancing her responsibilities as leader with raising a litter of kits.
  • Bramblestar's Storm features the newly promoted Bramblestar, who wonders whether he can fill the pawsteps of his mentor/predecessor Firestar by doing things his own way.
• The Runaway:
  • Hollyleaf runs away at the end of the Power of Three arc after learning a shocking secret that leaves her feeling betrayed by her family.
  • Crookedstar was a runaway as a kit, but he didn't mean to stay away from his Clan for a long time. When he gets back, he becomes an apprentice at an age closer to when he'd normally be a warrior.
• Running Gag: Almost every time Runningnose makes an appearance, one of the main characters will remark that he can't be that great of a medicine cat since he can't even cure his own cold. To add to that, in the French version his name literally means "hay fever". Even dying isn't enough to stop him from being the butt of this joke...

S

• Sabotutor: Lionblaze claims that Ashfur (who has a grudge against Lionblaze's parents, as he was part of a Love Triangle involving them) has been teaching him to do everything the wrong way. Brambleclaw (Lionblaze's father), is shocked at the accusation because he knows it could possibly be true, but he also scolds Lionblaze for blaming others.
• Sadist:
  • One Eye has a terrifying sadistic streak; he takes great pleasure in manipulating, dominating, and torturing other cats just for the fun of it. He imprisons, beats and mauls Sparrow Fur (who is barely out of kithood), has his lackeys brutally beat up Acorn Fur (focusing on inflicting head wounds in this case) and later Clear Sky, and permanently scars his followers with his "mark" (a circle-shaped wound), all with blood-chilling joy.
  • In The Broken Code, Ashfur shows many signs of having become one; he finds satisfaction and takes pleasure in turning the Clans against one another, torturing his enslaved ghosts, and forcing Rootspring and Snowtuft to fight each other.
• Sadist Teacher:
  • Brokentail, who punishes his apprentice by making him hang from a branch by his teeth. His crime? He was talking too much during training. Later in Yellowfang's Secret, he trains kits far too young who accidentally kill their former denmate, another kit.
  • During Tigerclaw's exile from ThunderClan, he trains his group of former ShadowClan warriors with unsheathed claws so that they sustain injuries during their training. He and several others use this same method to train Dark Forest recruits, which leads to several cats being killed during training sessions.
• Said Bookism: The word "said" is always replaced with either "mewed" or "meowed." Apart from that, the more normal synonyms for "said," like "warned," "advised," and so on, are used often.
• Sailor Earth: The fanbase is notorious for this. Most Warriors fanfics have no involvement with the canon characters (either the writer will create new Clans or write about the book Clans in a different time period than canon).
• Same-Sex Triplets: Though there are quite a few sets of triplets in the series (what with them being cats), this trope is almost always averted. Possibly the only example of it being played straight is with Crookedstar and Willowbreeze's kits: Willowkit, Minnowkit, and Silverkit (though only Silverkit survives the illness that kills her sisters and mother just after their birth).
• Sanctuary of Solitude: Occasionally a cat will visit the Moonstone or Moonpool to commune with the spirits of their ancestors when they are troubled.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Hollyleaf, and to a lesser extent, her brothers, when they realize that they're the product of a forbidden relationship.
  • Bluestar after Forest of Secrets, when Tigerclaw's betrayal shatters her trust in her Clanmates and in StarClan.
• Satellite Love Interest: Silverstream. Her first appearance in the second book was only to rescue Graystripe from drowning. She never had an appearance where it didn't involve another more important character, and the only notable thing she did outside of bearing Graystripe's kits was getting Firestar in touch with cats who knew something about Redtail's death.
• Save the Jerk: At the beginning of the series, Sandpaw bullied Fireheart and his friends relentlessly alongside her friend Dustpaw, in part because of Fireheart's kittypet heritage. In the middle of one battle, Fireheart noticed that Sandpaw was about to fall into a gorge, which she didn't notice due to being in the midst of a fight. When he sprung forward to save her, she snapped at him for daring to help her... but changed her tune when she realized how close she was to dying. This incident warmed her up to him, and by the end of the series, she became his friend, and then his mate.
• Saved by a Terrible Performance: In a short-story featured in the "Battles of the Clans" field guide, Mistystar is seen training a group of apprentices in water combat. Rushpaw, the smallest, is having trouble swimming due to the water temperature and her size. After driving everyone crazy with her problems, she accidentally splashes water everywhere when they're tasked with ambushing Mistystar. She thinks she ruined everything, when Mistystar admits that the water splash made her think the apprentices were on the other side of the stream— and that it could be considered a brand new battling tactic.
• Saying Too Much:
  • In Forest of Secrets, Swiftpaw lets it slip at a Gathering that ThunderClan is sheltering Brokentail.
  • In Lost Stars, Jayfeather accidentally says in front of the other Clans in a fit of anger that Mothwing doesn't believe in StarClan. He also snaps about how trying to break the ice on the Moonpool didn't work... in front of Tigerstar, who hadn't been invited and is shocked.
• Scare the Dog: In The Rise of Scourge, it's explained that Bone first met Scourge because of rumors (which Scourge himself had spread) that Scourge defeated a dog in combat. Bone and another cat named Brick got Scourge to fight another dog that had been terrorizing cats around the town. While at that point, Scourge wasn't the all-powerful cat known to fans, his badass-looking shadow was able to scare away the dog and earn him the respect of Bone.
• Scars Are Forever: Scars mostly are looked upon as a sign of toughness - young cats often refuse to let the medicine cat treat them so that a scar forms - but Brightheart by far has the worst scars, which make other cats uneasy rather than envious: half her face was torn off by dogs, and it has affected her for the rest of her life.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: A scene in SkyClan's Destiny features Frecklepaw being the victim of a bee attack.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Graypool has something like dementia: she gets confused frequently, getting the past and present mixed up. She tragically meets her death this way: she wanders off alone, thinking she's going to a Gathering, confuses Tigerstar for the long-dead father of her adopted kits, Oakheart, and reveals the secret that the kits are from ThunderClan. Tigerstar gets impatient with her, and, flustered, she steps backward, loses her balance, and falls down a slope, hitting her head.
• Scavenger Hunt: In The Sight, Icekit and Foxkit are disappointed that they're too young to participate in the apprentice competitions, so their mother Ferncloud sets a scavenger hunt for them: they have to bring back a beetle, some moss, and a fly.
• Scene Cover: The graphic novels show a scene from the volume, but they usually don't match an actual panel. The only one that has so far is Into the Woods.
• Schmuck Banquet:
  • When the forest is being destroyed by Twolegs (humans), the cats find little "dens" (cages) with kittypet food in them, and after they get trapped in them, they are taken away by the Twolegs. Leafpaw is hungry and desperate enough to try eating it and gets caught.
  • The cats attempt this as well: they leave out some freshly-killed prey stuffed with highly poisonous berries in the hope that this unexpected meal will look appealing to the local mountain lion, who they hope will eat it and die of the poison. It doesn't work; he merely swipes it aside and continues into the cave to attack the cats.
• Scratchy-Voiced Senior: Elders are occasionally described as having raspy voices; Yellowfang in particular is described this way a lot, and in the first book Dappletail is mentioned to have a voice cracked with age.
• Screaming Birth: While there usually isn't actually any screaming involved, the she-cats will be given a stick to bite down on when the pain comes. Said stick usually snaps at the end.
• Screw Destiny: Lionblaze wants to prove to Cinderheart that destiny doesn't control their lives when the latter thinks so. So he starts a fight with a ShadowClan patrol and deliberately lets Ratscar beat him. It backfires, for Cinderheart gets angry at him for being hurt (since his power prevents him from being hurt) and trying to avoid his destiny. The next time he persuades her, she finally chooses him as her mate.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: This is the attitude most elders take. Sandstorm even says that once she becomes an elder it will be her life's ambition to be the crankiest elder who ever lived. Word of God has admitted that the influence of one of their older pet cats had something to do with it.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: A pretty common mark of a 'good guy' character is to ignore the warrior code when it seems to be getting in the way of morality. Firestar does this a lot in the original series.
• Second Love:
  • Firestar initially fell in love with Spottedleaf. Though they never spoke about their feelings when she was alive, she continued to visit him in his dreams. In the end, though, he fell in love with Sandstorm and became her mate.
  • Graystripe's first love was Silverstream: they were Star-Crossed Lovers, and she died giving birth to his kits. Many, many moons later - when his children are grown up and thinking about having their own kits - he falls in love with Millie.
  • In Dawn of the Clans, Clear Sky was first in love with Bright Stream, but she died tragically before they reached their new home. He next fell in love with Storm, but she left him after he started to become more cruel and obsessed with survival. He finally found happiness with his third love, Star Flower, and was able to be a proper father to her kits unlike he had with Storm's kit Thunder.
  • Also in Dawn of the Clans, Gray Wing finds love again with Slate after his first mate, Turtle Tail, dies.
• Second-Person Narration: Several stories - or the narration between the stories - in the Warrior Cats guidebooks are written this way. Occasionally it will be as if the reader is a cat interacting with the characters. Other times, it will be from one character speaking this way to another specific character that appears in the books. At times - notably the "so-and-so speaks" portions - the identity of the "you" isn't necessarily clear.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Several cats help keep forbidden relationships hidden. Fireheart and Mistyfoot do this for Graystripe and Silverstream's relationship, and Squirrelflight raises Leafpool's kits as her own.
  • In the second series, Leafpaw is the only cat that knows about both prophecies: the one that the traveling cats received, and the fire-and-tiger sign.
  • Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Leafpool know that Hollyleaf killed Ashfur, but they decide not to reveal it to the Clan. Apparently keeping secrets just runs in the family.
• Secretly Dying: In Twilight, an unknown cat in the prologue is told by StarClan that they are going to die soon. This cat ends up being Cinderpelt, and she never tells anyone until her death. Turns out that being told in advance was a test, and since she kept it secret she is rewarded by being reincarnated as her own niece, who was born the same instant Cinderpelt died.
• Secret Relationship: Everywhere, all the time. Reedfeather/Fallowtail, Raggedstar/Yellowfang, Bluestar/Oakheart, Graystripe/Silverstream, Crowfeather/Leafpool, Lionblaze/Heathertail, Dovewing/Tigerheart... Great StarClan, the list is endless. And they never end well.
• Secret Stab Wound: In A Light in the Mist, after the villain is defeated, the characters are happily visiting their loved ones in StarClan before returning to the waking world, when all of a sudden Graystripe stumbles and it's revealed that he has a fatal belly wound. He explains that he hid it because didn't want to worry everyone else, and that it doesn't bother him that he's dying since he's lived a good long life. He survives long enough to wake up and say goodbye to his family before passing on.
• Secret Test:
  • According to Cats of the Clans, StarClan telling Cinderpelt about her death in advance was a test to see if she was worthy of a second chance at life.
  • On the official iOS app, it mentions that when Squirrelflight and Leafpool were kits, Squirrelkit put fire ants in her sister's bedding. Their mother, Sandstorm, knew she'd done that, and that night she announced that the two would be switching nests. She really meant for Squirrelkit to say she didn't want to switch nests, to confess to what she'd done, but Squirrelkit didn't say a word, choosing instead to spend the night being bitten by ants. Sandstorm, while disappointed that Squirrelkit didn't confess and apologize, admired her daughter's stubbornness and determination.
• Secret Underground Passage: The tunnel under the Thunderpath in ShadowClan territory in the old forest, as well as the tunnels between ThunderClan and WindClan in the lake territories. Also, though they never appear in the original series, there are apparently secret tunnels under WindClan's territory in the old forest.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Jayfeather's powers normally include dream walking, viewing the memories of others, and feeling their emotions. There's one instance, however, where he unintentionally sees through his brother Lionpaw's eyes while he and Breezepaw are having a hunting contest, and the ground collapses under him, burying Lionpaw and Breezepaw alive. Thanks to Jayfeather (then Jaypaw) seeing this, he is able to get help and save their lives.
• Seers: Any medicine cat, and the Clan leaders, too for that matter. They all get visions and prophecies from StarClan.
• Sensing You Are Outmatched: There are several instances when cats realize they cannot win: for instance in the prologue of the first book Redtail orders the ThunderClan patrol to retreat from the battle at Sunningrocks when he realizes that there are just too many RiverClan warriors and that his cats are losing.
• Series Continuity Error: Lots and lots of them; see the individual books' Recap pages for some examples. Characters often change pelt colors and occasionally flip genders, sometimes they'll forget what certain characters know and don't know, time passage will be inaccurate, and some details about Clan life and the history of the Clans have gotten changed around. Seeing as there's dozens of books and side books, over a thousand characters, and multiple people writing the series, it's only natural that things get mixed up once in a while.
• See Water: In Night Whispers, Flametail is able to see clearly underwater as he drowns.
• Self-Imposed Exile: At the end of the third arc of Warrior Cats, Hollyleaf reveals that she murdered a Clanmate, and claims that she can't stay with her Clan now that "everything is ruined". She runs into a tunnel, attempting to leave the territory, and is presumed dead in the ensuing rockfall. She survives, but stays away from her Clan out of shame and as a self-imposed punishment before returning over a year later.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Longtail gives his life in Fading Echoes to save.......... a half-eaten mouse, because Mousefur doesn't want to waste prey. And it doesn't get saved. (Although, his running in to get it saved Mousefur, since she was originally going to go in herself.)
• Separated at Birth: Fireheart was born as a house cat, so he and his siblings were split up and all given to new owners when they were still kits. After living in the forest Clans for a few moons, he is patrolling the edge of his territory one day and spots his sister. She doesn't recognize him at first, but they quickly become friends again and he continues to visit her until the Clans leave.
• Sequel Series: There are several sub-series that make up the overall Warriors series, and most of them follow the same storyline that the first series started.
• Series Fauxnale: The Last Hope was intended to be the grand finale, and included the big battle between the Clans and the Dark Forest that they'd been building up to for two series, wrapped up other plotlines, and gave characters one last moment of glory, including some long-dead characters making a cameo. More books ended up coming out afterward.
• Seriously Scruffy: Goosefeather almost never washes himself and has extremely bad breath, possibly due to his role as the Mad Oracle, and the fact that his prophecies are often misleading.
• Settle for Sibling: Berrynose was in love with Honeyfern, but Honeyfern died of an accident. Moons later Berrynose mated with Honeyfern's littermate, Poppyfrost.
• Shame If Something Happened: In Fire and Ice, there's one moment where Cloudkit loses the moss ball he was playing with, and Tigerclaw gives it back to him, saying "Be careful. You wouldn't want to lose such a precious plaything." He looks at Fireheart while saying this, however, and Fireheart realizes the implication that his nephew Cloudkit is the "plaything".
• A Shared Suffering: Brambleclaw is the son of Tigerstar, who terrorized the Clans when he was alive. Because of this, the other cats hate and distrust Brambleclaw; he grows up feeling lonely and uncomfortable around them. (Brambleclaw had a sister, but she left the Clan to get away from this treatment.) When he finds out that Tigerstar had another son - Hawkfrost - he's overjoyed, and the two strike up a fast friendship because of this trope. However, while they share the same memories of prejudice, they deal with it in different ways: Brambleclaw tries desperately to impress his Clanmates and be the best warrior he can be, while Hawkfrost tries to overthrow the Clans and make himself deputy. Unfortunately, when other cats try to warn Brambleclaw of Hawkfrost's bloodthirsty ambitions, he considers it a sign of the same discrimination that he endured, and refuses to listen.
• Shared Unusual Trait: At one point Hollyleaf notes that Cinderheart always flicks her paw a certain way when grooming herself. She notices Leafpool staring at Cinderheart, and Leafpool comments that Cinderpelt used to flick her paw like that. Cinderheart is a reincarnation of Cinderpelt, and while the reader already knows this, it's one of the first times the characters see the resemblance between the two.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Yellowfang and Raggedstar act like this in Yellowfang's Secret. At first.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Both Rosetail and Larksong are Platonicshippers (BlueXThrush).
  • In The Forgotten Warrior, Whitewing, Ivypool and Cinderheart all start shipping Dovewing with Bumblestripe.
• Ship Sinking: Though it is a Crack Pairing JayxStick accumulated quite a fandom. In The Fourth Apprentice, Jayfeather breaks the stick. Vicky said that JayxStick was a romance and therefore it had to be doomed like many other romances in the series.
• Ship Tease: Jayfeather/Briarlight got a fair amount of tease. While the fact that she lives with him can be overlooked (he's a medicine cat, she's permanently crippled, so it's akin to her living at a hospital), what can't is how she's the only one who can actually get him to stop working and take care of himself. There's also the scene where she breaks down and confides to him how she hates feeling useless to the Clan and how much she wishes she could make something of herself, and he offers to make her his assistant to cheer her up. They frequently cuddle, clean, and/or sleep together, which is something reserved for siblings and mates. She's also one of about three cats who believes him when he says he didn't murder Flametail, which touches him enough to snap him out of his Heroic BSoD. When Briarlight dies in River of Fire, Jayfeather is extremely distraught and blames himself for her death. At her vigil, he chokes up while talking about her, so his apprentice Alderheart speaks for him instead.
• Shout-Out:
  • As Vicky is a Star Trek fan, The New Prophecy was originally going to be called The Next Generation. She still had files on her computer with "TNG" in the name years after the New Prophecy series was done.
  • One of the Adventure Game chapters in Battles of the Clans is titled "Here Comes The Sun".
  • A few character name references:
    • Fuzzypelt is named after Fuzzy Felt, a toy Vicky remembers playing with when she was little.
    • Macgyver in SkyClan's Destiny is named after the television show of the same name, as Vicky is a fan.
    • Nightwhisper's rogue name, Mowgli, is the same name as the main protagonist from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
    • Two cats that show up together in Bramblestar's Storm are named Scarlet and O'Hara.
    • A cat and dog in Pebbleshine's Kits that have been together since birth are named Bug and Bunny.
  • Several quotes from movies have been altered and made it into the dialogue:
    • In Moonrise, Talon's answer to how they'll lure Sharptooth to the cave - "With blood." - is a reference to Rambo.
    • In Sunset, after Hawkfrost dies, Brambleclaw hears Hawkfrost's voice in his mind, saying, "We will meet again, my brother. This is not over yet." This is a reference to the line "One day we will meet again, my brother. But not yet, not yet." from Gladiator.
    • In Ravenpaw's Farewell, the line "There is a secret that I have kept from you without meaning to: I have always been a warrior." is a reference to the line "That's my secret, Captain. I'm always angry." from The Avengers. When Vicky got the go-ahead to write a novella about Ravenpaw's final days, the original version of the line in her head was "That's my secret, Barley. I have always been a warrior." (She changed it enough so that it wouldn't be so obvious that the line was lifted from the movie.) From there she got the idea for the rest of the book, that Ravenpaw would be confronted with his warrior loyalties one last time before his death.
    • In Tallstar's Revenge, Talltail says, "You killed my father. Now I'm going to kill you." Vicky confirmed on her Facebook that Talltail was paraphrasing Inigo Montoya.
  • James Barry revealed◊ that the Twoleg who sprays Graystripe with a hose in The Lost Warrior is a cameo of Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous.
• Shoot Your Mate:
  • In The Darkest Hour, Stonefur, a half-Clan cat, is told to kill two half-Clan apprentices to prove his loyalty. He refuses, sacrificing his life to save the apprentices.
  • Later on, when Ivypaw is acting as a spy for the Clans in the Dark Forest, the Dark Forest cats, suspicious of her loyalty, order her to "kill" Flametail, a StarClan spirit that got lost and found his way to the Dark Forest. She attacks him, but is stopped by the cat's brother. Even though she didn't actually wipe out his spirit, this still secures the Dark Forest's trust in her.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: In Midnight, Purdy offers to show the traveling Clan cats a way though the city rather than having the cats waste time traveling around it. He claims the whole time that he knows where he's going, but the Clan cats know it's not the quickest route (at one point they realize they've been traveling in the wrong direction all day; they're supposed to be heading toward the sunset). It also results in Feathertail nearly getting captured by a Twoleg and Tawnypelt being bitten badly by a rat.
• Short-Lived Leadership:
  • Following the fall of Brokenstar, Nightstar took over as the leader of ShadowClan. However, he was never given his eight extra lives by StarClan, because they still considered Brokenstar the true leader. Because of this, he and his deputy both ended up dying of illness soon later, leaving ShadowClan in a temporary state of anarchy.
  • Though not technically a leader, Lionheart had the shortest time as deputy, being promoted after Redtail died and then being killed off in a battle just a few moons later during the same book.
• Shotgun Wedding: Crowfeather must get his Clan to trust him again after he had a romance with a cat from a rival Clan. His solution? Sleep with a random she-cat (Nightcloud) and get a bunch of pureblood kits, of course! Fans have nicknamed this ship...Shotgunshipping.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Billystorm gives one of these to Sol during Sol's "Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Blackstar delivers an epic one to Redwillow and kills him on the spot.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: In The Last Hope, Firestar asks Big Bad Tigerstar if all the hate and death was worth it; Tigerstar responds "every moment."
• Sibling Rivalry: Dovewing and Ivypool. Dovewing is The Chosen One and has special powers, and wishes she could be normal like every other cat; her sister Ivypool is normal but is jealous of all the attention her sister gets. There is plenty of friction between the two as a result.
• Sibling Yin-Yang:
  • Squirrelflight and Leafpool: Leafpool is calm and patient, while Squirrelflight is hot-tempered and hyper. One character even compares them to water and fire when talking about their differences.
  • Sparkpelt and Alderheart: Sparkpelt is confident and boisterous, Alderheart is a gentler worrier. Sandstorm tells Alderheart at one point, "Sparkpaw believes she's solved every problem, and you believe you've caused every problem. You're two sides of the same leaf."
• Sickening "Crunch!": Occasionally there's an audible crunch when a cat's bone breaks - for instance the spine of one of the rogues in Path of Stars, or Wind Runner's leg in Moth Flight's Vision.
• Sick Episode: While sickness appears in the books plenty of times, Long Shadows is one of the more prominent examples: most of ThunderClan became ill with the deadly disease greencough; we see the healthy cats attempting to keep up with all the patrols and hunting, and cat after cat becomes sick.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong:
  • Bluestar's Prophecy reveals that Tigerclaw, the massive, strong Big Bad of the series, was the runt of his litter: he was too weak even to feed, and wasn't expected to survive his first night. His mother chose the name Tigerkit in the hope that he'd become strong.
  • Scourge was born a kittypet runt who was named "Tiny". His siblings often teased him due to his size. After being told that Twolegs drown kittens that no one wants, Scourge ran away and became a rogue. As an adult Scourge becomes the feared and fearsome Ax-Crazy leader of BloodClan, though he is still a small cat.
  • Crookedstar got his broken jaw by falling and smashing his face against one of the river's stepping stones as a kit. He spent quite a bit of his kithood in the medicine den afterwards, and he fell behind physically because of it and was apprenticed late. Not only this, his mother Rainflower became neglectful and emotionally abusive towards him and some of his Clanmates doubted his capabilities on count of his injury. Thankfully, he grows into one of the most well-known, honorable cats in [[River Clan's]]history and is regarded as one of the great leaders.
• Sickly Green Glow: The Dark Forest glows green. Fits well, having to do with both evil and death.
• The Siege: SkyClan had to endure this. Forced out of their home, they found a gorge and settled down in it. However, a massive horde of rats surrounded them, just waiting for them to try to leave the get some food, take a nap outside the gorge, or something of the sort. When a cat left, they were swarmed by rats and killed. It was enough to drive a cat mad, and led to the end of SkyClan. However, the cats get the last laugh, as the rebuilt SkyClan drives a group of rats under a pile of garbage, surrounds it and waits for them to try to escape, then kills them as they leave.
• Signature Move: Firestar's favourite move is his Playing Possum skill. He even uses it to defeat Scourge, the Final Boss of the original series. It gets lampshaded later on in the series (specifically in The Forgotten Warrior) by Spirit Antpelt, who points out to Ivypool that it was such a cool move that everyone copied it off Firestar and now it's just a tired old trick.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Firestar is the protagonist of the first series and ends up saving his Clan and the other Clans as well, and is a very prominent character for the rest of the series. His name even comes from his bright ginger pelt. His daughter, Squirrelflight, is also a bright ginger cat with green eyes; she's a protagonist in the second arc and also remains a major character in the series.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The four "prequel" Super Editions feature roughly the same timeframe from four different points of view. There are several direct scenes that the books share, sometimes featuring the characters talking to (or at least noticing) one of the others.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Tigerclaw is this to Ravenpaw. Bluestar gave Ravenpaw to Tigerclaw thinking that Tigerclaw would teach the timid young cat to be brave. Turns out that Tigerclaw doesn't care much for an apprentice that doesn't share his bloodthirsty attitude. He's especially hard on him to begin with, and after Ravenpaw saw Tigerclaw commit murder, Tigerclaw tried to have him killed by giving him deliberately difficult tasks, such as hunting at Snakerocks (named for the poisonous snakes that live there; cats avoid it during warm weather), and hunting in enemy territory.
• Sitting on the Roof: In the first Graystripe manga, there's a scene where Graystripe and Millie have a heart-to-heart conversation on a random roof. It kind of makes sense because they're cats. This image was even colored and used in promotional materials.
• Skeptic No Longer: Word of God stated that Cloudtail and Mothwing of Warrior Cats stopped being atheists after the Dark Forest invasion in The Last Hope, when they saw Dark Forest and StarClan cats with their own eyes. This is confirmed by Mothwing's POV in Mothwing's Secret, and she finally admitted onscreen in the 7th arc that she's accepted that StarClan does exist, she just doesn't believe they have everyone's best interests at heart. Cloudtail's viewpoint on the other hand isn't directly stated (he does say "Great StarClan!" at one point in The Apprentice's Quest, but it's also a very common phrase that doesn't necessarily mean belief in StarClan.)
• Sky Face: When Firestar's going on his Quest, he sees his deceased mentor/leader Bluestar's face in the clouds, and she looks worried. This is right before Sandstorm goes missing in the flood.
• Slashed Throat: The most commonly used method of killing someone. One of the more realistic, messy examples.
• Slasher Smile: Mapleshade. She can make Ivypool feel like Daisy is with her, right before trying to drown her.
• Sliding Scale of Animal Cast: The series is about Clans of feral cats living in the woods. Humans mostly are viewed as threats, particularly their machines. It is accepted that not all of them are hostile, though - even friendly - though the cats still want nothing to do with them, and house cats ("kittypets") are scorned for their easy life. In some of the graphic novels, notably Sasha's trilogy, there's a few that are named and that speak, though the cats are unable to understand them.
• Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: Basically subscribes to Prophecies Are Guidlelines, Not Rules. StarClan can warn cats that bad stuff is going to happen, and with this foreknowledge cats are often able to avert terrible events. Warriors probably exists somewhere between this and Fighting Fate Is Hard, because only some cats succeed in thwarting fate. On the other hand, Rock claims to have seen the whole future in a vision and is the one making sure it plays out exactly as it's supposed to. And it does. He's the source of all StarClan prophecies, who themselves have no clairvoyance. So you might say that any signs of free will simply come from StarClan not knowing the original vision.
• Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Clan society is set up for almost perfect gender equality with both toms and she-cats receiving equal training and equal opportunity to become medicine cat, deputy, or Clan leader. Not to mention that there has never been a point in the series where there were no female leaders, all the Action Girls throughout the series, and how later deputies have been female. The only difference between toms and she-cats is that she-cats have to raise their kits for six months, which is more a biological necessity than discrimination. On top of that, there has been an almost equal number of male and female protagonists. The only real question that has come up on occasion is whether or not female cats in positions of authority should be allowed to have kits. There's no explicit rule against it, but it is not often done because it is believed that having kits will distract and incapacitate the she-cat, especially while nursing. Leafstar challenges this idea in SkyClan's Destiny, citing the warrior code rule "The word of the Clan leader is the warrior code" as the reason: she's the leader, so she gets to say what's okay and not, and she says that it's okay for female leaders to have kits. There's still a lot of controversy among the fans as to whether there's sexism in the series, though, with the 15:4 ratio of male to female leaders from the prequel super editions to the present often cited, or the way that the series tends to follow Females Are More Innocent, with one female villain (whose Freudian Excuse involved being dumped by a tom) and another minor (one who got a Gender Bender thanks to Continuity Snarl) to many male villains.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: A mix of the two, leaning towards cynicism. Most things are accomplished through war, murder, or force. Most characters who start out idealistic eventually turn cynical. However, most of the characters dislike violence, but believe it is for the greater good. One cynical character even turns idealistic. Either way, this series just about sums up Gray-and-Grey Morality.
• Sliding Scale of Leadership Responsibility: The best leaders tend to be Theodens (who take an equal share in the danger and fight alongside their warriors) with the occasional Superman moment, which is to say that they sometimes take on the most dangerous tasks in order to spare their cats some unreasonable danger. Villains are always Xykons (sacrificing their cats left and right without a care) and Magnetos, who aren't quite as bad as Xykons, but still don't care that much about their followers.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Berrynose and his successor, Beetlenose.
  • Tigerstar claims he's greater than StarClan after changing the number of Clans from 4 to 2.
  • All the other Clans seem to believe Firestar is this due to his tendencies to try and talk things out instead of fighting and the fact that he's helped each Clan in the past; the other leaders consider him arrogant.
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy, Thistleclaw and Oakheart are both said to be arrogant pricks...though Oakheart later turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • Sasha in Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy. Although she only appears once or twice, she mothered Tigerstar's children, who go on to become super important characters.
  • Socks and Ruby in The Rise of Scourge. Both were mean to Tiny, causing him to run away and become Scourge.
• Small Town Boredom: The reason Rusty decides to stop being a kittypet and become a warrior. He's bored with his kittypet life.
• Smart People Speak the Queen's English: The original audiobooks of Starlight, Twilight, and Sunset are read by Nanette Savard, an American actress. The narration and most of the characters are read with an American accent - except, for some reason, the medicine cats, who are read with a British accent. They're regular Clan cats, born and lived with their Clanmates all their lives, and just chose a different job - so where did the accent come from? Are they born with it and for some reason all cats with this accent take the medicine cat's job? Or does healing cats suddenly give you a different accent somehow?
• Smells of Death: Cats "smelling of death" isn't uncommon. It's described as either a bitter or sour smell. For example, Badgerpaw (who was only three months old) is noted to have had a sour smell when he died. He reeked of blood and crow-food/rotten meat.
• Smokescreen Crime: In Forest of Secrets, Tigerclaw plots to kill Bluestar, the leader of the ThunderClan, in order to take her position. To carry this out, he lures a pack of rogues into the ThunderClan camp as a distraction, then sneaks into Bluestar's den to kill her with no interference.
• Sneaky Departure:
  • In Into the Wild, Yellowfang sneaks away from ThunderClan's camp to chase after Clawface, who she deduces has stolen ThunderClan kits. Firepaw, Ravenpaw, and Graypaw sneak away to chase after her, and to fake Ravenpaw's death.
  • In Fire and Ice, Tigerclaw claims to have found evidence of an invasion that the Clan leader Bluestar needs to see. (It's actually a trap he set to kill Bluestar so that he can take over.) However, Bluestar is too sick to go and see, so Fireheart's apprentice Cinderpaw offers to go instead. Fireheart forbids her from going, but she sneaks out of camp anyway and walks into Tigerclaw's trap, causing her to get hit by a car and break her leg.
  • In Fire and Ice and Forest of Secrets, Graystripe constantly sneaks out of ThunderClan's camp so that he can meet with his love interest Silverstream. This is necessary, as they are in a forbidden relationship.
  • At the beginning of Forest of Secrets, Fireheart and Graystripe sneak away after a Gathering to meet with Ravenpaw so that they can find proof that Tigerclaw murdered Redtail. They later sneak away from ThunderClan territory into RiverClan to find more proof, and eventually to deliver food to the starving Clan.
  • In Rising Storm, Cloudpaw sneaks away from ThunderClan to get food from humans. Unfortunately for him, this leads to him getting kidnapped.
  • In A Dangerous Path, after Bluestar refuses to make them warriors, Swiftpaw and Brightpaw sneak away from the camp to fight the dogs and prove their valour. Swiftpaw ends up dying in the fight and Brightpaw gets half of her face ripped off.
  • In The Darkest Hour, it's revealed that Darkstripe has been sneaking away from ThunderClan camp to meet with Tigerstar and give him intel on what ThunderClan is up to.
  • The New Prophecy begins with a cat from each Clan getting an omen telling them that they need to go on a journey far away from the Clans. Since they can't let their Clanmates in on this, they have to sneak away from the Clans and meet up together for the journey.
  • In Twilight, Leafpool and Crowfeather sneak away from their Clans to meet up, and eventually run away with each other. Since they didn't tell anyone, their Clans each think that they went to the other Clan.
  • Dark River is basically "Sneaky Departures, the Book". First, Lionpaw and Heatherpaw are constantly sneaking away at night to meet each other. Then, Hollypaw sneaks away from ThunderClan camp and goes to RiverClan to find out what the huge problem impacting them is. Then, a battle starts when three WindClan kits sneak away from their Clan to explore the tunnels they heard about and WindClan thinks they were kidnapped. In order to stop the battle, two separate groups composed on Lionpaw, Hollypaw, and Jaypaw, and Breezepaw and Heatherpaw sneak away to find the kits.
  • The plot of Dawn of the Clans is kicked off when Jagged Peak sneaks away from the Tribe to join the Followers of the Sun Trail and find a new home, forcing Gray Wing to head after him so that he can keep him safe on the journey.
• Sneeze Interruption: In "Lost Stars", Bristlefrost and Snaptooth decide to spy on Mousewhisker and Berrynose to find out what was so important that they had to sneak away from the hunting patrol to talk about it in secret. Unfortunately, Snaptooth sneezes, alerting the pair and interrupting the conversation.
• Snipe Hunt: In Into the Wild, Graypaw hopes that Sandpaw and Dustpaw will be sent on one, commenting that he hopes their mentors will set them the task of hunting blue squirrels all day. Firepaw doesn't get the joke, confused because there are no blue squirrels.
• Snooping Little Kid:
  • In Forest of Secrets, Fireheart's nosy nephew Cloudkit tracks Fireheart and Graystripe to the river when they sneak off to share prey with RiverClan, which gets them in trouble with the Clan deputy and leader upon their return.
  • In The Darkest Hour, Sorrelkit knows that Darkstripe is supposed to have Brackenfur guarding him, and is curious to know what he's doing when he sneaks off on his own. He spots her and tricks her into eating poisonous berries so that she can't reveal that she saw him plotting with an enemy warrior; fortunately she survives.
• Snow Means Death: In Bluestar's Prophecy, one of Bluefur's kits, Mosskit, freezes to death in the snow when Bluefur is taking them to RiverClan to stay with their father, Oakheart. Later in the book, Goosefeather also accurately predicts that he'll die on the day of the first snowfall.
• Soaperizing: The third and fourth series of have been described this way by fans, since there's really no antagonist and no overarching conflict until the later part of the fourth series.
• The Social Darwinist:
  • Tigerstar and other villains say that weak cats should either look after themselves or die. Clear Sky went as far as kicking his injured brother out of his group.
  • In Crookedstar's Promise, Crookedstar and Oakheart's mother Rainflower arranges for the latter to be mentored by their father Shellheart...though it's uncommon for parents to mentor their children in the series. When questioned about it, she declares that only the strongest mentors could train the best apprentices. Right in front of Crookedstar.
• Soldier vs. Warrior:
  • Warriors, naturally, discusses the trope. When cats first came to the forest, they were savage and lonely - fighting only for their own survival or that of their families. "It was a lawless, bloody time for the forest, and many cats died." After an especially senseless battle, the cats agreed to follow laws: they would not send kittens into battle, they would not kill defeated enemies, and no cat would hunt in another's territory. Cats still fought frequently (because it's in their nature to do so) but their adherence to the 'warrior code' resulted in a lot less death and paranoia.
  • During The Prophecies Begin, Firepaw learns that one of the reasons forest cats dislike pets and urban strays is because they don't follow the code. The series climaxes with the titular Warriors fighting off a horde of untrained strays/Soldiers through superior tactics and experience.
• Spared, but Not Forgiven: Blackfoot's Reckoning revealed Blackstar, leader of ShadowClan for much of the series, received one of his nine lives from Rosetail — a ThunderClan elder who he murdered while trying to kidnap kits out of the nursery. She all but shoves the life into him, and bitterly turns away as soon as it's over. It doesn't help that the life she gives him is one for compassion. Ouch.
• Spanner in the Works: Fireheart completely ruins Tigerclaw's plans by running into the cave where Tigerclaw was during a battle and beating Tigerclaw up.
• The Spartan Way: ShadowClan's training while Brokenstar is the leader - even kits are forced to train in the brutal battle training, and many end up dying. Dark Forest training also counts as the cats fight with unsheathed claws and some of them die as well.
• Speak in Unison: StarClan is described as sounding like every cat Firestar has ever known, all speaking at once in one clear voice.
• Species-Specific Afterlife: This is implied to be the case. The possible afterlives shown in the series, being StarClan, The Tribe of Endless Hunting, and the Dark Forest, only show cat spirits inhabiting them. While hunting is possible in StarClan and the Tribe, it's unknown where the prey comes from. It's known that the boundaries between these afterlives are possible to cross between, making it likely that other animals inhabit their own afterlives and might be able to connect to the cats.
• Speed Stripes: The manga illustrated by James Barry tend to do this: for instance, when cats chase prey, run from danger, or leap into battle.
• Spikes of Villainy: Scourge wears a collar studded with dog teeth; many cats in his Clan, BloodClan, wear similar collars as well.
• Spin-Offspring:
  • Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy focuses on Leafpool and Squirrelflight, kittens of The Hero and his Love Interest from the first arc, as well as Brambleclaw, son of the Big Bad Tigerstar; Tawnypelt, Feathertail, and Stormfur (Tigerstar's other kit, and Graystripe's kits) are also major characters.
  • The third arc, Power of Three, is about the kits of Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight (or so they think - they're actually the children of two other second arc characters, Leafpool and Crowfeather).
  • The fourth arc Omen of the Stars focuses on the kittens of minor characters Birchfall and Whitewing in addition to continuing the points of view of the third arc.
  • The sixth arc, A Vision of Shadows, features the son and daughter of Bramblestar and Squirrelflight (their first real litter), who are younger than the protagonists of series 3 and 4.
  • The seventh arc, The Broken Code, follows Bristlefrost and Shadowsight, who are kits of the series 4 protagonists Ivypool and Dovewing, as well as Rootpaw, the kit of the series 6 protagonist Violetshine.
  • The eighth arc, A Starless Clan, moves away from this somewhat, as only one protagonist is descended from previous ones: Nightheart is the grandson of the series 2 protagonist Squirrelflight.
• Spirit Advisor: StarClan cats serve this role, guiding their former Clans and cats in it that they cared about.
• Spiritual Successor: To Tailchaser's Song. Also to The Book of the Named series, which is about prehistoric big cats living in a clan - to the point that people occasionally accuse The Named of copying Warriors, not realizing that Ratha's Creature was published 20 years before Into the Wild. (The two series also have completely different themes and age demographics.)
• Spoiler Title: Several of the Expanded Universe works, mostly due to being Late Arrival Spoilers.
  • The Super Edition Leopardstar's Confession would reveal Crookedstar's death to those who had not read the fifth book yet.
  • The first Super Edition, Firestar's Quest, reveals who becomes leader to people who haven't finished the first arc.
  • The third Super Edition, SkyClan's Destiny both subverts and plays this straight. Every other Super Edition is named for the viewpoint character, which in this case would spoil which member of the newly founded SkyClan becomes leader at the end of Firestar's Quest. However, it doesn't use that format, but still spoils Firestar's Quest by revealing that there's another Clan out there. SkyClan and the Stranger continues in this tradition by not revealing who becomes leader in Firestar's Quest, while giving away the earlier revealed spoiler of SkyClan's existence.
  • One of the manga arcs is called Tigerstar and Sasha, spoiling Tigerclaw becoming a leader for first series readers and the identity of Hawkfrost and Mothwing's father for The New Prophecy readers.
  • Onestar's Confession makes it pretty clear that Onewhisker becomes the WindClan leader, for those who haven't gotten to The New Prophecy #4 yet.
  • The title of the first novella should tell you that Hollyleaf didn't die in Sunrise, because the book is Hollyleaf's Story.
  • The second e-book is titled Mistystar's Omen, revealing to readers who haven't read Fading Echoes that Mistyfoot becomes a leader.
  • The seventh Super Edition is named Bramblestar's Storm. Nice job giving away the ending of The Last Hope, Erins.
• Spring Is Late: A plot point in Into the Wild is that spring is late and ThunderClan needs more warriors now, causing its leader Bluestar to take in a kittypet.
• Squishy Wizard: Most medicine cats. Though they are trained in self-defense they have nowhere near as much combat training as warriors. There are a couple exceptions who were warriors before becoming medicine cats, however, such as Yellowfang.
• Stable Time Loop: In Starlight, the cats find a perfect (and uninhabited by other cats) spot to live. If there had been other cats, they wouldn't have been able to stay there. Later, in Long Shadows, Jayfeather travels into the past and convinces the cats living there to leave for the mountains, which he could not have done had he not lived there. Then, Rock appears and tells Jayfeather that he remembers that Jay's Wing (the cat everyone mistook Jayfeather for) disappeared after the cats left for the mountains. Because of this, he takes Jayfeather back to his own time, causing his memories of Jay's Wing's disappearance. Also, in Outcast, Jayfeather met the Tribe Of Rushing Water, and learned their customs. Then, in Sign Of The Moon, he travels back to the Ancient Cats and teaches them the Tribe's customs, allowing them to become the Tribe.
• Stalker Shot: The original cover◊ of Rising Storm depicts an unaware Fireheart as Tigerclaw sneaks up on him.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • Spottedleaf. She had undying love and affection for Firestar, continuing on as a spirit despite how they had no future together. When Firestar fell in love with another, a feisty she-cat named Sandstorm, she coped with her sadness by deciding that she would be okay with it as long as Firestar was happy. She had even died again (this time for good) to protect Sandstorm and Firestar's happiness by proxy.
  • Thrushpelt was another example. He had one-sided love for Bluestar (Bluefur at the time) and when he realized she had become pregnant, he respected that she couldn't reveal who the father was and promised her that he would pose as her "mate" to the Clan to protect the secret of her kits, and raise them as his own, because he wanted her happy.
  • Crowfeather also qualified briefly when he saw that Leafpool was happier with her Clan than with him, but eventually lost that selflessness and became extremely bitter with her choice to the point he was a complete jackass.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: These occur often, usually due to the fact that the warrior code forbids cats from becoming mates with a cat outside their Clan, and medicine cats aren't supposed to have mates at all.
  • Bluestar ended up pregnant with her lover Oakheart's kits. Due to them being in different Clans, and the fact that she needs to become Clan deputy in order to prevent Thistleclaw from getting the position and leading the Clan into unnecessary wars, she has to leave her kits with him and not acknowledge her relationship with him or her kits for the rest of her life. She finally reveals to her kits that she is their mother just before she dies.
  • Crowfeather and Feathertail as well. Both of them are also from separate Clans, but become close in their journey for a new home. When they finally confess their love for each other, Feathertail is killed shortly afterwards in a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Crowfeather and Leafpool later on: not only are they in different Clans, but Leafpool is also a medicine cat. Leafpool has to give her kits to her sister to raise, and has to pretend to be just an aunt when she is actually their mother. Furthermore, when the truth comes out, one of her kits turns insane and nearly murders Leafpool. Because of that, she even gives up her place as medicine cat, but still cannot be reunited with Crowfeather, as he is determined to prove his loyalty to his own Clan, and is stuck with a mate he does not love, as well as another son, who is also a Jerkass.
  • Graystripe and Silverstream, who, again, are from different Clans. Silverstream dies giving birth to Graystripe's kits, and he ends up leaving ThunderClan in order to raise his kits in their mother's Clan.
  • Ryewhisker and Cloudberry in "Code of the Clans", the whole reason for the no-mates-outside-your-Clan rule to begin with. Just as Cloudberry is pregnant with Ryewhisker's kits, he is killed defending her from his own Clanmates as she is from a rival Clan. This causes an even bigger wedge to be driven between the two Clans.
  • Dovewing and Tigerheart. They meet on the journey to the beaver dam, and begin meeting in secret. The two end up falling in love, but later end their meetings. Dovewing would get another mate, a tom from her own Clan, but she realizes that she does not love him as much as Tigerheart and they break up. Dovewing ends up pregnant with Tigerheart's kits and joins ShadowClan to be with Tigerheart so that they can raise their kits together.
  • Bristlefrost and Rootspring. Like many other examples on this list, they're from different Clans. They talk about joining each other's Clan but don't want to leave their own. Finally, during the conflict with Ashfur in the Dark Forest, Rootspring decides to leave his Clan to join hers... only for her to sacrifice not just her life, but the very existence of her spirit to destroy Ashfur, meaning that they won't even be together in the afterlife. Due to this, Rootspring supports the warrior code being changed to allow cross-Clan relationships (provided that one cat joins the other's Clan.)
• Stargazing Scene: There are many scenes like this, with the added significance that the Stars Are Souls of Clan cats who have passed away, so they're actually looking at their ancestors in their version of heaven. One such scene in The Darkest Hour has Firestar heading out alone to think and watching the stars on Sunningrocks; he ends up yowling to the sky asking them for help, and they answer him in a dream after he falls asleep there.
• Stars Are Souls: When a Clan cat dies they go to StarClan. They are said to live in Silverpelt (the Milky Way).
• The Starscream:
  • Scourge was generally treated as an underling by Tigerstar before slitting his throat and killing him nine times over with the emotion one would reserve for swatting a fly.
  • Brokenstar served as this to Raggedstar and pulled it off successfully.
  • Tigerstar was this before even becoming second in command by plotting and eventually killing the second-in command, and then after that tried to kill off Bluestar numerous times, all of them failed, with the final time resulting in exile.
• Starter Villain: Brokenstar in Into the Wild.
• Start My Own:
  • Some remnants of BloodClan decide to try and start their own Clan in Ravenpaw and Barley's barn.
  • Sol, after parting ways with SkyClan, starts his own Clanlike group of cats.
  • In A Forest Divided, after several arguments, Thunder and his friends leave Clear Sky's group (future SkyClan), and eventually found their own group (future ThunderClan).
• Start of Darkness:
  • The Rise of Scourge for Scourge.
  • SkyClan and the Stranger, for Sol/Harry.
  • Mapleshade's Vengeance, for Mapleshade.
• Starts with Their Funeral:
  • The prologue of Bluestar's Prophecy is Bluestar's death. The book then goes back to recount the story of her life.
  • Similarly, Onestar's Confession begins with Onestar's death; he reflects on his life while he waits for StarClan to judge him.
• Start to Corpse: The series' first death takes place early on, on page 33 of the first book.
• Stealth Insult: In the later books of the series, most Gatherings consist almost entirely of the Clans taking jabs at each other in this manner.
  "I am pleased to hear that you are getting so much use out of a piece of land prey-poor by ThunderClan standards."
• Stellar Name: When a cat becomes a Clan leader, the last half of their name is replaced with "-star", to represent how they're connected to their ancestors, StarClan.
• Still the Leader: In The New Prophecy, the WindClan leader Tallstar becomes so old and ill that his second-in-command, Mudclaw, makes most of the decisions for the Clan. With his dying breaths, Tallstar decides that he doesn't want Mudclaw to be the next leader, so he makes Onewhisker his successor instead.
• Stock Animal Diet: Zigzagged with ThunderClan, who eat squirrels, rabbits, voles, and mice, but think fish are gross. RiverClan, WindClan, SkyClan and the Tribe of Rushing Water play it more straight, eating fish, rabbits, birds, and eagles, respectively. ShadowClan mostly averts it, eating lizards, frogs, snakes and rats (although that last one caused trouble for them when some cat dropped a contaminated rat on the fresh-kill pile and made the entire Clan sick).
• Stock Animal Name: Several of the non-Clan cats have these names, including Tom, Cinnamon, Mittens, Patch, Smoky, Mitzi, Whiskers, and Max.
• Stood Up: Leafpool accidentally does this to Crowfeather — she'd promised to meet him, but then had to come desperately to RiverClan's aid when Mothwing could not heal them alone.
• Stop Drowning and Stand Up: In Bluestar's Prophecy, Bluefur attacks the enemy warrior Oakheart, but misses and falls into a river. Bluefur begs for Oakheart to save her, but he laughs and tells her to stand up, because she was "drowning" in shallow water.
• Stopped Caring: Bluestar, in books 4 and 5 (Rising Storm and A Dangerous Path) of the first series.
• Storming the Castle: The characters will, on rare occasions, attack another Clan's camp instead of just fighting somewhere in the territory. This can be risky, though, as the home Clan knows the best way to defend it, will be fighting more fiercely and desperately to protect the defenseless kits and elders, and the raiding Clan is usually outnumbered. It's worked about as often as it has failed.
• A Storm Is Coming:
  • In the prologue of Dark River, cats feel that rain is coming. Fallen Leaves then goes to the tunnels to take his test, and lies to Rock that there are no signs of rain. Turns out there is an underground river there that floods the tunnels during the rain.
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy, Featherwhisker forecasts rain for a few days, and it starts raining just before the battle with WindClan.
• Story Arc: Each series is its own story arc that contributes to the overall Myth Arc (although series 3+4 were really one long arc, and series 5 was a prequel): the first series followed Firestar's rise to leadership and defeat of villain Tigerstar, the second series was about the forest's destruction and the Clans finding a new home, as well as Hawkfrost's attempt at following in Tigerstar's pawsteps, the third and fourth series dealt with three cats discovering that they have special powers and the Dark Forest's attempt to destroy the Clans, and the sixth series is about the discovery of the modern remnants of SkyClan. The seventh series involves the Clans getting disconnected from StarClan and an impostor spreading discord among the Clans, and the eighth deals with the fallout of this and a crisis in RiverClan.
• The Storyteller: Purdy is known for his love of telling stories. Whether cats actually sit and listen to him is up for debate.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land:
  • Happens to Graystripe twice - once when he comes back to ThunderClan after having left to raise his kits in RiverClan (where their mother had lived), and once when he is captured by Twolegs and is thought to be dead for over a year. Both times, though, it eventually fades away.
  • Also happens to Hollyleaf, when she returns after a year of having been thought of as dead, and then is instantly revealed to her Clanmates as a murderer (though her family covers for her, claiming Ashfur attacked her.)
• Strange Salute: The Tribe's greeting gesture: extending one paw while bowing the head.
• Stray Animal Story: The series centers around entire societies of feral cats living in the wild and their interactions with each other/struggles against nature; the general consensus among the cats themselves is that Humans Are Cthulhu and should be avoided whenever possible. Kittypets are looked down upon and some cats even consider them inferior.
• Street Urchin: Tiny took to the streets after being told that humans throw unwanted kits in the river. His street life began pitiful and begging for scraps, but thanks to telling some tall tales and gradually Becoming the Mask, he ends up as Scourge, the feared leader of BloodClan (the city strays).
• Strike Me Down: Yellowfang tries to convince the main character to kill her, because she is shamed by being defeated (and, as we see in her Super Edition, feels she doesn't have much to live for at this point.)
• Successful Sibling Syndrome:
  • Ivypool, who felt invisible and useless compared to Dovewing, her sister, who was getting all the attention and doing all the heroic stuff. Her insecurities over this drove her to join the Dark Forest and train with Hawkfrost, and she took chances to criticize and insult her sister in order to make herself look superior. The two sisters did make up eventually, but not after a lot of Sibling Rivalry and moral issues to overcome.
  • Breezepelt seemed to be jealous of Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf, after learning they were his siblings.
  • Also inverted in the case of Blossomfall being jealous of Briarlight...who was paralyzed and suffering, because Briarlight was the one who got all of their mother's attention, and not because of her skills or talents.
• Struggling Single Mother: In Firestar's Quest, Clover starts as this, explaining that her mate left her before her kits were born and that it's hard raising them on her own; it's why she's so eager to join the new Clan after Firestar and Scratch save her and her kits from a fox.
• Succession Crisis: Happens a couple times, despite the fact that the Clans' hierarchy is set up in a way to avoid it.
  • In the second series, Tallstar, leader of WindClan, announces with his dying breaths that Mudclaw is no longer his deputy: Onewhisker now is. Since deputy succeeds leader, and Tallstar managed to announce his decision only to Onewhisker, Firestar (Onewhisker's friend), and Brambleclaw (Firestar's trusted warrior), many WindClan cats don't believe it, and start a civil war supporting the old deputy.
  • The guidebook Code of the Clans explains how this setup came to be, after two specific crises: The deputy-becomes-leader rule started after there was a case where a leader selected his son as his successor. The son led his Clan into a needless fight, where half the cats disagreed with his choice and those that did listen nearly drowned. He realized that the deputy, due to her rank, had more experience in being in charge of the Clan. The rule that states that the new deputy must be chosen before moonhigh was created after a new leader waited too long to choose her deputy. She died of sickness, leaving the Clan leaderless and with two more dead cats who had attempted to fight for leadership. Eventually the spirit of the previous leader tells the medicine cat in a dream to choose who the new leader will be.
  • In the eighth series, the RiverClan leader Mistystar loses her final life, and her deputy Reedwhisker is found dead that same day. The medicine cat apprentice, Frostpaw, receives a sign that the next leader should be her mother Curlfeather, but Curlfeather dies on the way to the Moonpool to receive her nine lives. Frostpaw next is told that she must make the choice about the next leader herself, but her choice, Owlnose, isn't visited by StarClan when he visits the Moonpool.
• Sudden Name Change: These occur sometimes, due to author error:
  • Owlfeather of WindClan's name mysteriously changes to Owlwhisker.
  • The outcasts in Moonrise introduce themselves by their full names, two of them being "Rock Where Snow Gathers" and "Bird Who Rides The Wind". The full names are only mentioned once; they go by their nicknames "Rock" and "Bird" for the rest of the book. In the next book, their full names have changed to "Rock Beneath Still Water" and "Bird That Sings at Dusk". Bird appeared again in later books, and the authors attempted to fix their mistake; she is now "Bird That Rides The Wind".
  • They considered doing this with Bluestar's mother in Bluestar's Prophecy. She was mentioned with the name Moonflower in Secrets of the Clans, but that was considered to be something of a mistake because the moon is significant to the Clans and they really wouldn't name a kit after it. When working on Bluestar's Prophecy they intended to name her Duskflower, even answering an "ask Erin" question on warriorcats.com using that name, but in the published book she appeared with her original name, Moonflower. Vicky later explained that at the time she answered it they were planning on changing the name but ultimately decided to keep the original name since it had already appeared in the books and just have the "moon" name be a one-off thing.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
  • Sandstorm is one of the oldest cats in the Clan by the time of the sixth series, but after the Great Battle against the Dark Forest she retired so she's out of the action, and healthy enough that she is expected to stick around for a while. She decides to accompany Alderpaw on his quest in the first book of the sixth series and ends up dying on the way.
  • SkyClan's Destiny and the SkyClan manga trilogy ended with SkyClan thriving, and though they have trouble in Ravenpaw's Farewell, they're still doing well. Hawkwing's Journey wastes no time in killing off half the Clan, including beloved characters like Leafstar's mate Billystorm.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Crowfeather comes off as cold and heartless to most of the world, except for Feathertail, and later, Leafpool. Both are his Love Interests, and his relationships with both end badly. This is later deconstructed as he Took a Level in Jerkass. He doesn't show love to his son (who later turns evil directly because of Crowfeather's neglect) and makes it blatantly clear to Nightcloud that he only took her as his mate to make WindClan trust him again. And because of emotional and legal shenanigans, he breaks up with Leafpool and treats her like crap every time they meet, openly despising her and disowning the children he had with her. Also, after Feathertail died - urging him with her last breath to not use her death as a further excuse to close out the world - guess what he does. So by the time the fourth series rolls around, he's just a plain Jerkass with no redeeming traits. Should have added a little more sugar there, buddy.
• Suicidal Pacifism: In Battles of the Clans, Morningstar, a Clan leader, refused to fight, afraid to see his warriors injured - even announcing publicly at a Gathering that they were too weak for him to sanction a fight and politely asking the other Clans to stop hunting in ThunderClan territory. Of course, this was an open invitation to the other Clans to continue hunting there, since they would not be driven off. Eventually the spirit of his mate visits him and explains to him that they need to fight battles, and he agrees.
• Super-Hearing: The main aspect of Dovewing's power.
• Super-Senses: Dovewing's special power is that she has super senses - in particular, strong hearing - that allows her to know what cats are doing even all the way across the lake. She is surprised to learn that not everyone is like that.
• Supporting Leader: Bluestar in the original series. She usually sends Fireheart off to do important tasks while she holds off the villains long enough for him to complete them.
• Supporting Protagonist: In SkyClan's Destiny Leafstar is the perspective character, however, Stick is the main character and the story centers around his struggles with the evil Dodge.
• Surprise Pregnancy:
  • Bluestar is unaware that she is pregnant until another she-cat points it out.
  • Squirrelflight is also shocked to learn that she has become pregnant, since she believed that it was impossible for her to have kits.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The mighty leader Leopardstar does not die during a great battle or heroic deed, as you might expect. Instead, she loses her life to...disease. A slow, painful disease that no one knows how to cure. What? They're feral cats - sickness is going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
  • Brokenstar's kit-warriors are completely ineffective in battle, and such a blatant violation of the Code makes every Clan in the forest (including his own) hate him. Brokenstar is quickly overthrown (partly because of these idiotic tactics) to make way for a more pragmatic villain.
  • In Long Shadows, Ashfur proudly describes his Evil Plan in front of its intended victims, apparently believing that they're too honorable to try and stop him. Guess who turns up mysteriously dead afterwards?
  • Every now and then, the local humans will attempt to address the fact that the area is infested with feral cats. It never ends well for the Clans.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: At one point in Night Whispers, Tigerheart asks Dovewing how she always manages to get to their meeting place first. Dovewing mutters back that she totally doesn't listen for when he leaves his nest.
• Swarm of Rats:
  • Bluestar loses one of her lives to a horde of rats in the first book.
  • In the Super Editions Firestar's Quest and SkyClan's Destiny, a huge Hive Mind swarm of rats serves as a major antagonist. There are so many that when one character tells Firestar "you can't see the ground for all the rats", Firestar thinks he's exaggerating, but realizes when he goes to fight the rats himself that the cat was right.
  • Yellowfang's Secret has ShadowClan facing off against swarms of rats (one of their primary food sources) twice. The second time, Foxheart is killed by two rats who jump on her as if they were trained.
• Sweets of Temptation: In The Darkest Hour, Sorrelkit sneaks out of camp and sees Darkstripe having a secret conversation with Blackfoot. To keep her quiet, he gives her some tasty-looking red berries for a treat, which are actually poisonous deathberries. She nearly dies, but Firestar finds her in time and scrapes most of the deathberries out of her mouth, and Cinderpelt shoves yarrow down her throat to make her throw up the rest of them. Her life is saved, but it takes her a long time to recover.
• Switching P.O.V.: The first arc used this only for prologues but it became normal in all the other series due to their multiple protagonists. The New Prophecy has Leafpaw and one other cat per book (Brambleclaw or Squirrelpaw, mainly; one book had Stormfur and a couple chapters of Feathertail). Power of Three has Hollypaw, Lionpaw, and Jaypaw. Omen of the Stars has Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Ivypaw, and Dovepaw (and Flametail for one book). Dawn of the Clans has Gray Wing, Thunder, and Clear Sky. A Vision of Shadows switches between Alderheart, Twigbranch, and Violetshine. The Broken Code features Shadowpaw, Bristlefrost, and Rootpaw.
• Sworn in by Oath: When an apprentice becomes a full warrior of their Clan (or when an outsider is taken into the Clan as a new warrior), the warrior ceremony includes a vow:
  "Do you promise to uphold the warrior code and to protect and defend this Clan, even at the cost of your life?"
• Symbolically Broken Object: Upon first joining ThunderClan, Rusty's collar breaks in a fight against Longtail, who had been loudly taunting him about his origins. This is taken as an omen that their ancestors, StarClan, approve of him joining the Clan, and represents that he's left his old life behind.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: The Ultimate Guide is narrated in third person, but the information given is noticeably slanted towards whoever's life it's recounting. For example, Ashfur's omits his betrayal of ThunderClan to Hawkfrost, which nearly killed Firestar (as Ashfur hoped it would) in favor of saying that he "was not a friend of Firestar", and describes him as a "good mentor" when he actively sabotaged Lionblaze's training. However, this could also be the result of Flip-Flop of God - the different authors do not agree on his characterization.
• Sympathetic Wince: it's pretty common for other cats to wince at another's injuries or emotions; for instance, in the first series Fireheart does this in Fire and Ice when witnessing Cinderpaw limp on her crippled leg, in A Dangerous Path when Leopardstar mocks Bluestar, and in The Darkest Hour when hearing the pain in Bramblepaw's voice as the apprentice begs his sister to come back to their Clan.
• Sympathy for the Devil: When Tigerstar is killed, Firestar reflects on the fact that normally he'd be relieved or happy that this dangerous cat is gone, but all he feels staring down at Tigerstar's body is grief. Tigerstar had been gifted with strength, intelligence, and charisma, and he could have become a legend as one of the greatest warriors in history had he not chosen to follow a dark path.

T

• Take a Third Option:
  • The moor cats are arguing whether or not they should attack Clear Sky. They've reached a stalemate when Cloud Spots interrupts, pointing out that they don't have any prey stored, and that feeding themselves is a higher priority than dealing with Clear Sky.
  • After joining SkyClan, Tree trains as both a warrior and as a medicine cat, though finds that neither are suitable for him. Leafstar's response is to just create a new rank specifically for him.
• Take Up My Sword: This is what Tigerstar intends for Brambleclaw, Hawkfrost, Tawnypelt for a short time, Jayfeather for a short time, Lionblaze, and Tigerheart. He succeeds with one of them.
• Taking the Bullet: Red does this for Harley in SkyClan's Destiny, jumping in the way when Stick goes for Harley's throat.
• Taking the Veil: Becoming a medicine cat: they're training to become the religious leader of their Clan and are forbidden to take a mate.
• Taking You with Me: In the climax of A Dangerous Path, Bluestar charges the leader of the dog pack and knocks him into the gorge; she lands on the edge but as the dog falls he manages to bite one of her legs and drag her in after him. She survives only long enough to have a final conversation and reconcile herself with her kits.
• Talking in Your Dreams: StarClan does this all the time, and so does Tigerstar in the second series and onward. Jayfeather is the only living character who can do this to other living cats. Some experiences with dreamwalking has also shown that characters who are wounded in dreams sustain the same injuries in the waking world - it is even possible to be killed in a dream.
• Talking Is a Free Action: In The Last Hope, Graystripe is overjoyed to see Whitestorm again when StarClan shows up for the Final Battle, but Whitestorm cuts him off, saying, "This is a battle, not a reunion." Then, on the next page, a random Dark Forest mook offs Mousefur when she stops fighting to talk with Longtail. However, when Tigerstar shows up, he stands around talking with Firestar for a few pages before they actually fight.
• Tangled Family Tree: It can be incredibly difficult to keep track of cats' relationships and relatives. Especially since a lot of the parentage of cats from the original series is only known to us by Word of God. Just look at this thing!
• Tastes Like Disdain: In Spottedleaf's Heart, Thrushpelt brings prey to give to Bluefur's kits, who everyone in the Clan assumes were fathered by him due to his very obvious feelings for her. Bluefur coolly tells him that her kits have had enough to eat despite the fact that they want it, rejecting his affections and his offer to behave as the kits' father.
• Taught by Experience: Scourge was thrown out onto the streets and learned this way. It led to him becoming a brutal killer with no remorse.
• Teacher/Student Romance:
  • Cinderpelt mentions that she had feelings for her mentor, Firestar. However, Firestar, being... er, Firestar, didn't notice or reciprocate.
  • When Fernpaw's mentor was exiled and she needed a new mentor, Dustpelt (who had feelings for her - and was already mentoring her twin, Ashpaw) asked if he could be her new mentor. Fernpaw was thrilled at the idea, but Dustpelt's request was denied because he wouldn't be tough enough on her, hindering her training. This doesn't stop them from becoming mates, however.
  • Cherrytail has the kits of her mentor Sharpclaw, though this is long after she becomes a warrior and is no longer mentored by him.
  • Onewhisker becomes mates with his former apprentice Whitetail; some time after she becomes a warrior, he realizes that she's interested in him and he starts to feel the same way.
• Team Mom: Daisy's main role is to care for the kits and help new mothers with the trials of motherhood. She's a literal team mom.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In The New Prophecy, one cat from each of the four Clans is chosen by their ancestors for a mission. Two more cats end up coming along on the journey. Since they are from different Clans, some of them are quite a bit tense around each other, even hostile at times, but after helping each other through numerous dangers, they become Fire-Forged Friends.
• Tempting Fate: While training with Lionblaze, Rosepetal actually says, "What could possibly go wrong?" in response to Lionblaze saying that Toadstep shouldn't be so loud when he trains. Immediately after she says this, Bumblestripe appears and says that a dog is attacking his crippled sister, Briarlight.
• Terrible Trio: Tigerclaw, Darkstripe, and Longtail. Tigerclaw is rarely seen without his loyal followers. They remain loyal until the end, at least until Tigerclaw is exposed as a traitor. Longtail chooses his Clan over his friend, but Darkstripe later joins Tigerclaw in exile.
• Thank Your Prey: This is one of the rules in the warrior code, to thank StarClan for the life the prey had given up to feed the Clan. Averted, however, with Tigerstar: he feels that he doesn't owe StarClan any thanks because he caught the prey himself.
• That Man Is Dead: After Hawkfrost's death, his sister Mothwing grieves for Hawk - not the manipulative villain he had become as Hawkfrost, but the innocent brother he used to be.
• That Old-Time Prescription: Medicine cats use remedies like poppy seeds as a sedative. The authors took much of the medicine cats' herblore from an old book called Culpeper's Herbal.
• That Satisfying "Crunch!": In The Fourth Apprentice, Jayfeather is so upset that Rock didn't tell him that Leafpool and Crowfeather are his real parents that he decides to break Rock's stick.
• Theme Naming: The cats have names made of two words strung together. Very often, parts of their names are things found in nature. Throughout the books, you'll find names containing animals, plants, rocks, landforms, natural phenomena, celestial bodies, weather, etc.
  • Alliterative Family: Graystripe and Millie's kits are named Bumblekit, Blossomkit, and Briarkit.
  • Animal Theme Naming:
    • The Clans often use animals as a prefix in their names.This includes various birds (e.g. Birdsong, Buzzardkit, Crowfeather, Duckpaw, Eaglekit, Finchflight, Goosefeather, Hawkfrost, Heronwing, Kestrelflight, Larksong, Owlclaw, Quailfeather, Ravenpaw, Robinwing, Rooktail, Sparrowfeather, Starlingwing, Swallowflight), other animals found in their environment (e.g. Adderfang, Badgerpaw, Deerleap, Doespring, Ferretclaw, Foxleap, Frogtail, Hareflight, Houndstar, Lizardstripe, Minnowtail, Molewhisker, Mousefang, Newtspeck, Ottersplash, Perchwing, Pikepaw, Rabbitfur, Ratscar, Sheeptail, Shrewpaw, Snailpaw, Snaketooth, Squirrelflight, Stagleap, Stoatfur, Toadfoot, Troutstream, Vixenkit, Voleclaw, Weaselfur, Wolfheart), Big cats found in their mythology (e.g. Lionheart, Leopardstar, Tigerclaw). -bird, -fish, -hawk, and -mouse are also suffixes that have been used at least once (Palebird, Sunfish, Silverhawk, Mistmouse).
    • Some Tribe cats - who happen to be named after the first thing their mother sees/hears after their birth - have names involving creatures, mostly birds: (Bird Who Rides The Wind, Flight of Startled Heron, Eagle Feather, Fluttering Bird, Swoop of Chestnut Hawk, Jackdaw's Cry, Lark That Sings At Dawn, Lion's Roar, Screech of Angry Owl, Splash When Fish Leaps, Talon of Swooping Eagle, Turtle Tail)
    • A few other random characters have animal-based names: (Fox, Frog, Magpie, Mole, Mouse Ears, Owl Feather, Raven Pelt, Running Horse, Shy Fawn, Snail Shell, Snow Hare, Sparrow, Swift Minnow, Toad, Wee Hen)
  • Colourful Theme Naming: Just about every basic color get used at least once, and they even use some more unusual ones, such as "golden", "silver", "copper", "russet", "tawny", "amber", and "fallow". Oddly enough, out of over 1000 characters, "white" is the most common prefix of all, and even "fallow" got used about five times, but "brown" only got used once, and the cat in question disappeared from the cast list before receiving his warrior name.
  • Floral Theme Naming: There are a lot of plant-based names, since the characters name their children after what they know, and they live in the forest. For instance, Acornpaw, Amberleaf, Applefrost, Aspentail, Beechfur, Berrynose, Birchfall, Blossomfall, Brackenfur, Brambleclaw, Briarlight, Cedarheart, Cherrytail, Chiveclaw, Clovertail, Coriander, Daisyheart, Dangling Leaf, Darkflower, Fennelstar, Ferncloud, Fircone, Flowerstem, Flower Stream, Furzepelt, Gooseberry, Gorsefur, Grassheart, Hayberry, Hazeltail, Heathertail, Hickorynose, Hollyleaf, Ivytail, Juniper Branch, Larchkit, Leafpool, Lichenfur, Lilyheart, Logfur, Mallownose, Maplestar, Marigoldkit, Milkweed, Mintfur, Mistlekit, Mosspelt, Nettleclaw, Nutwhisker, Oakheart, Oatwhisker, Olivenose, Parsleyseed, Petalnose, Pineclaw, Plumwillow, Poppycloud, Primrosepaw, Redthistle, Reedfeather, Rosetail, Rowanberry, Rushtail, Ryestalk, Sagenose, Sandgorse, Sedgecreek, Seedpelt, Shivering Rose, Tangleburr, Thistleclaw, Thornclaw, Timberfur, Violet Dawn, Willowshine, Yarrowleaf, Yew Tail.
  • Temporal Theme Naming: Some prefixes that Clan names used are based on time (e.g. Dawncloud, Nightstar, Morningflower, Duskfur). Midnight the Badger's name is also confused as a time when they're told to "listen to what Midnight tells you".
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Tigerstar's death. Killed by having nine internal organs cut through, therefore losing all nine of his leader's lives at once.
• The Power of Love: In The Place of No Stars, Bramblestar is able to resist (but not break free of) Ashfur's mind-control on him because of his love for Squirrelflight, and Rootspring manages to escape from the Dark Forest's strange, energy-sapping black lake by focusing on his love for Bristlefrost.
• This Is My Name on Foreign: The many foreign translations of the series. Since most of the characters names are collections of nouns and verbs, they all have to be translated for foreign audiences to understand their significance (the exception being the Japanese translation, which uses the original English names, leading to a lot of Gratuitous English).
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: In The Last Hope, Firestar and Tigerstar are ready for their Final Battle. This trope happens twice. When Graystripe was about to step in, Whitestorm holds him back, saying it was Firestar's battle. The second time happens when Sorreltail holds Sandstorm back when it looks like Tigerstar is overpowering Firestar.
• Those Two Guys: Birchfall and Berrynose.
• Thought They Knew Already: In Forest of Secrets, Fireheart knows that his nephew Cloudkit is going to face prejudice due to having been born as a house cat, and begins to give him a lecture about this, only to realize that Cloudkit's foster mother hadn't yet told him about where he was born. Needless to say, it's a bit of a shock to the young kit.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Battles are relatively common, but killing is seen as dishonourable, and is generally avoided, except by Tigerstar and Scourge.
• Three Plus Two: In Power of Three, Jayfeather, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze form a Power Trio because they think they are three cats all-powerful cats spoken of in a prophecy. At the end, Jayfeather realizes that Hollyleaf is not the true third. Then in the Omen of the Stars arc, the true third, Dovewing, and her sister, Ivypool, team up with the others.
• Throne Made of X: In The Darkest Hour, Tigerstar takes control of both RiverClan and ShadowClan, and has them build him the Bonehill, a pile of bones to sit on so he can look down on everyone else.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: In the first volume of the Graystripe manga, Millie blushes when Graystripe thanks her profusely for showing him a patch of trees that reminds him of the forest. Even more noticeable in the full-color version, when it's colored distinctly pink against her brownish fur.
• Throwing the Fight: In The Last Hope, Lionblaze tries to Screw Destiny by losing a fight. It doesn't really work out.
• Thunder Equals Downpour: In Beyond the Code. They're at a Gathering with the full moon shining down between a couple sparse clouds. The cats comment on how the drought might end since the air's cooler. An argument starts, Sol runs away in anger. Next panel: lightning flash and a KABOOM! Next panel: Downpour. The rain is even enough to flood almost the entire gorge that same night.
• Tiered by Name: This doubles as both Meaningful Name and Meaningful Rename, in that the name of a cat denotes rank in a Clan Hierarchy (like -kit for kits, -paw for apprentices and -star for leaders).
• Time Skip: There is a 12 (or 18, it's not clear due to Continuity Snarl) month skip between the first and second series (although this gap has been filled by Firestar's Quest and Ravenpaw's Path), and a six month gap between the second and third series. The fourth series is also supposed to start around six months after the end of the third. The sixth series is about eight moons after Bramblestar's Storm, the seventh series is about six moons after the sixth series, and the eighth series is about three moons after the seventh.
• Time-Travel Romance: Jayfeather travels to the past taking the place of Jay's Wing who he is a reincarnation of and meets Half-Moon, who is in love with Jay's Wing. Later, they come to genuinely love each other.
• Timmy in a Well: In SkyClan's Destiny, a young girl falls into the gorge, and the cats know that it'll mean that other humans will be looking for her - not to mention that half the Clan are or were kittypets that don't want a human to be hurt. When initial attempts at leading other humans to the gorge fails, they get various items out of the girl's backpack and create a trail leading to the gorge.
• Title Drop:
  • In the prologue for the fifth book of Power of Three, Rock makes a reference to "the power of three", and in Omen of the Stars, Yellowfang mentions "an Omen of the Stars" (capitalized like a title) in the prologue of the very first book.
  • There are no less than three echo related metaphors used in Fading Echoes.
  • In Sign of the Moon, the last series' title, Power of Three, is dropped: after Jayfeather realizes that Lion's Roar and Dove's Wing are reincarnations of Lionblaze and Dovewing, he says that the Power of Three has begun. And it is capitalized.
  • The Last Hope, however, takes the cake. It gets dropped at least five times in the book, two of them from the prologue alone.
• Together in Death:
  • In Crookedstar's Promise, Mapleshade mocks Crookedstar, telling him that he has lost everything because all his loved ones died. Crookedstar tells her off, informing her that now all his loved ones wait for him in StarClan, so when he dies, he'll be with them again.
  • In Bluestar's Prophecy, as Bluestar lies dying, her deceased mate Oakheart comes to lead her to StarClan, where she can not only be with him, but with her mother, sister, and kit as well.
  • Rather painfully subverted in The Last Hope. Spottedleaf made a promise that this would happen with Firestar when he eventually dies; however, shortly before this happens, Spottedleaf is killed Deader than Dead and undergoes Cessation of Existence.
• Token Trio: In Cats of the Clans, the kits Rock tells his stories to are Mosskit, who is half ThunderClan and half RiverClan, Adderkit, who is from WindClan, and Blossomkit, who is from ShadowClan.
• Tomato Surprise: In The Sight, it takes until the end of the 3nd chapter or so to reveal that one of the new main characters, Jaykit, is blind. His narration never mentions what anything looks like, aside from when he's dreaming, but most readers don't pick that up.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Squirrelflight and Leafpool fit this; the former being a fiery Action Girl warrior while the latter is a kind and gentle medicine cat.
• Tongue on the Flagpole:
  • In his manga trilogy, Ravenpaw gets his tongue stuck to some ice in a gutter on the barn roof.
  • Hollyleaf gets this too in Sunrise, up to the point where she gets playfully teased that she found a new way to get water for the elders. It's thanks to Brambleclaw breathing on the ice that she got free.
• Tonight, Someone Dies:
  • And one more warrior may be lost forever..., which likely referred to Hollyleaf. The word "lost" is probably meant to be taken literally, since she is indeed lost at the end and doesn't actually die. It could also refer to how she has "lost" her sanity, or "lost" her status as a warrior because she has turned her back on the Clans and the warrior code.
  • Also, Twilight opens with an unidentified cat being told that they will die soon, leaving the reader in suspense over who it will be. It turns out to be Cinderpelt.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky:
  • During Brokenstar's time as leader of ShadowClan, his warriors spent all their energy battling rather than hunting, so cats resorted to eating the rotting crowfood left in the Carrionplace.
  • Clan cats prefer freshly-killed prey and find pet food disgusting and degrading to eat, but there are times when some of them are on journeys and don't have time to hunt, or else are being held captive by Twolegs, so they end up eating it anyway to keep their strength up.
  • Similar to the pet food example, Clan cats will only shelter in abandoned buildings when absolutely necessary, such as in the second book when a storm kicks up as WindClan travel home.
• Took a Level in Badass: Daisy. When she joins ThunderClan, she's absolutely terrified of living in the wild and has no useful skills. Attempts to train her in even the basic self-defense fail miserably, and for a long time the only thing she does for her Clan is looking after kits. It takes her a long time but she eventually shows willingness to defend her Clan, and manages to get training just in time for battle with the Dark Forest, where she proves to be a pretty effective fighter.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • Onestar. He's a Nice Guy early on, but after becoming the leader of WindClan, he becomes more of a jerk as he attempts to prove his Clan's independence.
  • Clear Sky went through this after creating his community. In fact, he gets mad at Gray Wing for accidentally killing Fox... though that was his own fault, for HE was the one who told Fox to attack him. Another sign that shows this is when he kicks Jagged Peak out for breaking his leg and refusing to take his son Thunder into the community.
  • Tallstar in his Super Edition after his father Sandgorse dies. He's so upset and angry about it that he takes it out on the rogues... especially Sparrow, whom he blames for Sandgorse's death. Fortunately, Sparrow tells him the entire truth, and Talltail apologizes.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Sandstorm used to be such an Alpha Bitch to Firestar when he joined ThunderClan. But after he saves her from falling over the gorge, she becomes a better cat and falls in love with him. But she still has her snarky moments, however.
  • Blackstar also, believe it or not. While Onestar becomes more of a jerk as the series goes on, Blackstar (a gruff battle-scarred cat and essentially a Reformed Criminal) becomes something like an old kindly veteran who still has a gruff side.
• Too Proud for Lowly Work: Certain chores (such as gathering fresh bedding and checking the elders for ticks) are expected to be done by the apprentices, and typically young warriors are thrilled not to have to do them anymore after being promoted. However, sometimes when a Clan is short on apprentices, the duties must be shared by the warriors, which typically results in one of them complaining about having to do apprentice work.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The eclipse in... err... Eclipse.
• Totally Radical: Every so often, a young cat will call something "cool" or say "totally", which sticks out when compared to the fairly formal speech most of the Clan cats use.
• Tough Spikes and Studs: The cats of BloodClan frequently gloat about their battle prowess and wear collars embedded with dog teeth in order to look intimidating. Their leader, Scourge, takes it a step further and has dog claws over his own natural claws to make himself even scarier.
• To Win Without Fighting: In Bluestar's Prophecy, Sunstar decides to take back Sunningrocks from RiverClan by walking into their camp with a patrol and announcing that Sunningrocks is ThunderClan's territory now, and that any RiverClan blood spilled in an attempt to re-claim it will be on their leader Hailstar's paws. As Sunstar had planned, every Clan knows how strong ThunderClan is at that point, and RiverClan doesn't make an attempt to re-claim it after that.
• Traced Artwork: Some of the cats in illustrator Wayne McLoughlin's artwork, including from the cover of Twilight and illustrations in Cats of the Clans, appear to have been traced from photos copyrighted by Dorling Kindersley that appeared in various editions of their Eyewitness Cat book. Although this was noticed by fans, no legal issues came of it.
• Trailers Always Spoil: If you skim the back of any Warrior Cats from the end of the first series on before reading the rest, you know there's a cat named Firestar. After learning the naming conventions, it's pretty obvious who's going to become leader and in which book as well... Add in that the first few books spoiled name changes and deaths as well, in the Allegiances in the first few pages! Erin learned her mistake and either did not after a certain point in the book, or baited us in.
• Training from Hell: Both figuratively and literally with training in the Dark Forest.
• Training Montage: In The Lost Warrior there's a section where Millie asks Graystripe to teach her to fight, and it shows training sessions spanning several days, interspersed with her asking questions about Clan life, with Graystripe narrating over it about her progress.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: In Power of Three, some Clan cats lead the normally peaceful Tribe of Rushing Water to battle against invaders. And then they teach them both diplomacy.
• Translation Convention: It goes without saying that cats can't speak human, so all of the dialogue is written in whatever language you happen to be reading the books in.
• Trapped in the Past: Jayfeather in Long Shadows when he goes back to the time of the Ancients and can only go home after influencing them to go to the mountains.
• Trapped on the Astral Plane:
  • At the start of the seventh arc, after Bramblestar loses a life, he is unable to return to his body since some unknown being has begun to possess it, leaving his spirit stuck and running desperately around the territories, visible only to Rootpaw.
  • This happens to all cats who die in The Broken Code, as they cannot go to StarClan and are stuck as ghosts. Finally, once the connection to StarClan is restored in the last book, they're able to move on.
• Trauma Conga Line: SkyClan gets this a lot: originally they lost most of their territory due to Twolegs and began to starve, and then were driven out of the forest by other Clans; when they found the gorge, the remainder of the Clan was either killed by rats or split up. Special mention goes to their situation in Hawkwing's Journey: First they lose Duskpaw in a fire, then are unable to figure out the meaning of the prophecy Echosong received: when they try to follow it, cats (including Billystorm) die. The Clan is also attacked by raccoons at least twice, killing at least one and injuring others. Then Darktail's allies attack the gorge, forcing the Clan to flee. Several cats are killed in the battle (and one drowns in the river during their flight); several others go missing. The Clan decides that their only hope is to leave to find the other Clans, and several of their cats stay behind. SkyClan ends up running into trouble in Stick and Dodge's city and an apprentice is taken hostage, although at least SkyClan makes it out without losing anyone. Two cats leave to stay with Barley in his barn. During their journey, the pregnant Pebbleshine is kidnapped by Twolegs, and cats are frequently injured. They think they've found their new home by the lake, but the Clans have never lived by this particular lake, and the area proves to be too dangerous after multiple encounters with a hawk, dogs, and Twolegs (during which several more cats are captured by Twolegs, including a medicine cat apprentice.) A couple cats more decide to become kittypets. Then SkyClan falls ill with a sickness while the medicine cat is away, which kills a few more. They are in their darkest hour, saying that SkyClan is over, when finally a few missing Clan members find them, they are able to cure the sickness, and Echosong receives a new prophecy, leaving a spot of hope.
• Treachery Cover Up:
  • When Hollyleaf apparently dies in the tunnels after trying to escape from her Clan and everything that had gone wrong, Lionblaze and Jayfeather cover up her treachery by telling the Clan she had died chasing a squirrel into the tunnel, so that she would be remembered as a brave hunter rather than Ashfur's killer.
  • Hawkfrost is killed by Brambleclaw (via stabbing him with the stake from a fox trap) in order to stop Hawkfrost from killing Firestar. All that they told RiverClan, when they brought his body there, was that Hawkfrost had been killed by a fox trap and that it was a terrible accident. Leafpool does tell Mothwing the truth, but they don't feel the need to hurt RiverClan by sharing this knowledge with them.
  • ThunderClan does not reveal Ashfur's treachery after Long Shadows, nor Tigerstar's after he is exiled in Forest of Secrets, possibly because it will make their Clan seem weak.
• Tree Cover: In The Sun Trail, Gray Wing finds a cat hiding in a clump of bracken he had just walked by. This is very embarrassing for him, as he had just been berating his nephew Jagged Peak for claiming they were being watched.
• Tricked to Death:
  • Tigerclaw attempts this by sending a message that he wants Bluestar to meet him in a spot where he claims ShadowClan was scented on their territory, and setting his scent marker close to the edge of a road so that she'd run out onto it. Cinderpaw was caught instead, but thankfully didn't die.
  • In Hawkwing's Journey, Darktail gives a patrol false directions, leading the group directly to a badger den where Billystorm is slain.
• The Trickster: Sol. In addition to his life of traveling the earth to screw things up in as many places as possible, he has actually once been called a trickster in the books.
• Trilogy Creep: The New Prophecy was conceived of as a spin-off trilogy, but turned into a six-book sequel series.
• Trojan Prisoner: In the first book, a group of ShadowClan elders agree to help the ThunderClan warriors recover the kits ShadowClan had stolen. They drag former ShadowClan outcast Yellowfang into the camp and present her to their leader as their prisoner as they sneak the ThunderClan warriors into the camp.
• Trojan Veggies: According to Secrets of the Clans, Brambleberry, a RiverClan medicine cat, came up with a way to hide bitter-tasting medicinal herbs inside the bodies of freshly killed prey in order to get sick kits to eat them.
• Trophy Child:
  • This was the circumstances surrounding Breezepelt's birth. His father, Crowfeather, only agreed to have kits with his mother, Nightcloud, to prove himself a loyal warrior to WindClan after he ran off with Leafpool, the medicine cat of ThunderClan. Throughout the series he was seen as a lousy father who was a neglectful parent at best and an Abusive Parent at worst, while Breezepelt didn't handle the treatment very well, joining the Dark Forest with this as a Freudian Excuse.
  • Implied with Rainflower, as after her favorite child Stormkit breaks his jaw and becomes Crookedkit, she begins to ignore and insult him based solely on his imperfect looks compared to his brother Oakkit. This was after she neglected Oakkit in favor of Stormkit, originally having seen him as the stronger and more attractive of the two. This attitude continues even after she dies, where she doesn't give him a life during his leader ceremony.
  • Played with, with Bluestar's kits. As being a pregnant queen prevented her from being considered for the deputy position, which she needed to take to keep Thistleclaw out of the leadership position, she gave up her kits to live with their father in RiverClan. There they were raised lovingly and well to be strong warriors, but Bluestar always regretted that she had to give them up for her own ambition.
• Truce Trickery: In one Code of the Clans story, the Clans met up for their monthly gathering, a time which was traditionally meant to be a time for truce. This time, however, ShadowClan decided to attack the other three Clans, knowing they wouldn't be prepared and that they'd have elders and queens among them who couldn't fight back. The bloodshed ended when StarClan summoned a lightning bolt to kill ShadowClan's leader, and from then on the truce was made a part of the code to prevent this from happening again.
• Truce Zone: The Clans agree not to fight at Fourtrees and the Gathering Island, and meet there every full moon for a Gathering, where they share news and can chat with cats from other Clans.
• Tsundere:
  • The most stereotypical example of a tsundere started with Sandstorm in The Original Series. She initially held great dislike for the main character Firestar because of his kittypet background, but saw him differently after he saved her. Sandstorm became close friends and eventually mates with him as she fell deeply in love with Firestar; however that never stopped her from expressing her opinion! She got into many fights with him and was quick to annoy, much to Firestar's respect but discomfort.
  • Fittingly, both of Sandstorm's daughters become second-generation tsunderes as well. Squirrelflight most notably, seen in her hot-headed nature and dislike of Brambleclaw at the start until she eventually came to love him. Leafpool, however, also showed some traits of this through her relationship with Crowfeather; she disliked his attitude, but then fell in love with him. Not only that, but her previous gentle personality becomes more tempermental as she gets older (A Type B at the most)
  • Yellowfang. She was one of the most sharp-tongued she-cats in the series, though underneath it all was extremely compassionate and good-hearted. These two sides of hers were most frequently brought up through her interactions with Fireheart and Cinderpelt.
  • Bluestar in her youth. She was extremely proud, ambitious, and independent. Her "deredere" and "tsuntsun" sides were most frequently seen with her mate Oakheart. She hated his cockiness and arrogance right from the get-go, but fell genuinely in love with him and never did with another despite her difficultness.
• Tuckerization: Done several times...
  • Vicky has admitted to using fans' warrior names. Some of them, she has said, are from fans she met on tours, or from letters sent to her - none of these are known by anyone except her at this point. Some of them also came from online fans' names, notably from the sites Wands And Worlds and Warrior's Wish - confirmed ones include Lakestorm, Quailfeather, Flintfang, and Blizzardstar (tribute to Blizz, creator of Warrior's Wish, the largest fansite.)
  • Brightspirit, Shiningheart, and Braveheart are based on ten-year-old fan Emmy Cherry and her parents Jimmy and Dana, who all died in a tornado in February 2008. Vicky sent a message to Wands and Worlds so that the members there could offer words of support and comfort to Emmy's family. They gave Emmy and her parents warrior names to honor them. Vicky decided to use those names in the next book, Long Shadows, which she also dedicated to them.
  • Ivypool, a main character in Omen of the Stars, is named after a person too. While Ivy herself, as a baby, was too young to have read the books when her name was used, her family went to see the author on every single one of her tours, earning them the nickname "FarDrivingClan" from Vicky, and they had become good friends with her. She decided to name the character after the youngest member of the family - warrior name and all, because Ivy's full name is Ivy Poole. Vicky made a video with Ivy introducing her as the real Ivypool when announcing the movie deal.
• Tuft of Head Fur: While fanart commonly depicts cats with this, it's used rarely and very subtly in the graphic novels themselves.
• Tunnel Network:
  • WindClan's tunnel system in the forest.
  • The caves in the lake territory.
• Turn Out Like His Father: Brambleclaw worries that he might.
• Twin Telepathy: Squirrelflight and Leafpool, while not identical twins, were of the same litter, and exhibit some signs of this: they can sense each other's emotions, and have shared dreams and sensations on occasion.
• Two-Faced: Brightheart had half of her face ripped off by dogs in A Dangerous Path. This left her with one beautiful part and one horrifically scarred part. However, she is not evil in the slightest.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: For the first two books of The New Prophecy, the point of view switches between Leafpaw, a medicine cat apprentice watching as the forest crumbles around her, and one of the six journeying cats, who are on a quest to find a way to save the forest.
• Two-Part Trilogy: The first series works well by itself and nicely wraps up the ending. The ending of the second series has a few unsolved puzzles and sequel hooks, but can also work fine as the final ending of the whole book series. However when the third series ended, many plot points were still unresolved and it was clear it was just setting up the stage for the fourth series.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm:
  • The first arc has three of them. One of them is Brokenstar, who murdered his father Raggedstar to be ShadowClan's leader, and that's where things go downhill for the Clan really fast. He banishes all the elders from the safety of the camp, forces kits to become apprentices at three moons instead of six (and makes them warriors at five moons instead of twelve), and makes his Clan eat rotten food instead of fresh meat to focus on battles. He even lets Brightflower's kits die and shifts the blame onto Yellowfang (his mother and Brightflower's daughter), banishing her from the Clan. But a lot of ShadowClan cats get so sick of Brokenstar that they team up with a ThunderClan patrol to drive him out.
  • Tigerstar seems to be a good leader at first when he becomes leader, rebuilding ShadowClan's strength, but he still tries to get back at his former ThunderClanners. But in The Darkest Hour, he takes over the RiverClan camp, starts up propaganda against half-Clan cats and executes them, and attacks WindClan to put fear into them and show what would happen if they did not join TigerClan (a mix of ShadowClan and RiverClan). It was his tyranny that brings him to his bloody end, as an even fiercer tyrant named Scourge rips him open from head to tail.
  • Scourge starts out as a kittypet named Tiny who ran away from home. After he slowly becomes the leader of the stray cats in the city, he forms BloodClan and forms harsh rules for them to live by. One of his rules is that the weaker cats do not need to be taken care of. He doesn't like families living together in fear of being overthrown and punishes them for living together.
  • Impostor-Bramblestar (later revealed to be Ashfur) from the seventh arc. He begins exiling cats for the smallest of crimes, including his own mate and both of the medicine cats, doesn't actually put any work into being leader, and breaks the code himself by doing things like refusing to let the elders eat first and appoints two cats who haven't had apprentices as his deputy.

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