Felix Redpaw

On top of a haystack in early April a mother cat was giving birth. In a drafty barn where the sharp ear of a cat could pick up the faint scurrying of rodents; scurrying across the floor of the barn seeking out each and every seed of grass. It was a time of birth, spring, one could hear the baa of a baby lamb and the chirp of baby chicks sheltered under their mother's wing.

Up in the hay four new baby kittens were born. Their mother was a striking tortoiseshell that often visited the farmer's daughters seeking food in exchange for allowing them to pet her. The father was one of the many roaming tomcats who periodically stopped by the farm. This particular tomcat was a large orange tabby.

Of the kittens three were orange and one was a tortoiseshell like her mother. Of the orange tabby kittens two were male and the last female. One of the male kittens had a nick in his left ear though where his mother had accidentally bitten him as she cleaned him. This little kitten with the nicked ear would one day grow up to be Felix Redpaw. For now though he was just like any other newborn, blind and deaf to the world.

Over the next few weeks the kittens slowly grew feeding off their mothers milk and the occasional mouse she caught for them. For now everything was peaceful but soon tragedy would strike the farm where our family of cats called home.

***

Little did our family of felines know that their little homeland was about to be invaded. The Green Scourge was pushing hard into the Numah Kingdom. What was once a peaceful village was quickly changing. Conscription last month robbed the small village of over half of the men between the ages of 15 and 30 and now news had just come through that a scourge incursion had broken through the line and was less than ten miles away.