Alone (A Warrior Cat Story) (Book 1)

Chapter 18: Territory

We had finished hunting and it was about time to sleep. The mountains looked absolutely beautiful, I couldn't wait for the next step of my journey. I don't think I would be living there but it would be absolutely amazing if I had that sort of chance.
Mint was looking very tired again, and I wanted to catch at least a little bit of something before we laid our heads down to rest for the night. I saw a tree that might be good for the night but Mint would not be able to hop up there sadly like she normally could.
She was fast and could jump high, I was bigger and a better hunter but sometimes in a fight that wouldn't be so helpful. She was definitely healing as I had taken the cobwebs from off of her body just the other night.
You could still see where the wound was, but it was just about fully healed now. She would have a scar there for the rest of her life, and I knew she kind of thought that as a positive. She would brag to every cat we came across about how we har fought off a badger.
I couldn't complain because she would more than likely overexaggerated on my part of the story. It would make me sound bigger and stronger, and it might scare other cats from potentially attacking us.
Lionblaze told me that their were cats called rogues that would attack us from tine to time, he told me there was a big group of rogues that attacked them when he was alive.
They were cats that lived out here like me but most of them were not like me. A lot of them were not friendly at all, and some pretended to be friendly but they would stab you behind your back. They attacked you some times randomly, Lionblaze had told me. I believed him too, there was 1 cat that we tried to take in but he attacked us and scratched up Tristan pretty bad, I could only imagine the cats out in the wild.
I found a bit of a cave for us to spend the night that Mint could easily walk up to, it was small enough so that nothing dangerous besides a rogue could really get in. Owl had told me he had seen cats out there as well that were not friendly at all and attacked him as soon as they saw him.
I didn't want to test my fighting skills quiet yet... I was still a bit younger, not as young as Mint, sometimes I thought she was still a kitten just based off of how big she was and they way she talked. But I still cared about her, and I knew she was grateful for me saving her life.
As we had been walking most of the day I did my best to try and catch her up to me on hunting. She wasn't as good of a hunter as I was but that didn't mean she was not a good hunter. I couldn't tell you if she was a good hunter because I hadn't met any cats out here yet surprisingly.
We were close to the mountains, we had already gone uphill a little the past little while, but Mint was not strong enough at the moment to keep going and I knew she needed her sleep.
I just didn't want to go back to normal dreams, I would miss seeing all the other cats that kept me alive out here and taught me everything I needed to know to really make it out here.
Without them, I would be begging other owners to give me food, and that would not be any way to really live my life out. I was thanful, and I looked at the stars hoping they would know that I was. I knew that they were always watching me.
Mint sat down, I sat down beside her and snuggled up close to her. She purred and then fell asleep before I did, however it didn't take me very long to fall asleep as well...

I woke up but it wasn't my actual body, I could see another cat from not far away that looked a bit older but not too old. He was sitting in a broken down owners house like that one that we had slept in the first night that I was with Owl.
I missed him, I wanted him to follow me so badly, I thought for a while it might be because of Mint. I knew right then that he had liked her and I thought that maybe he would have come with me if he knew that she was coming as well.
But I shook my head, he had said no before we had even ran into her in the first place. I shook my head a bit sadly but then I realized that I did not even have a head. Its like I was just watching something, even though I really was not actually there.
The cat was just sitting down staring at the sky, but he was staring directly where the sun was setting. He shook his head and then randomly smiled... And then I woke up.

I shook my head, it was a weird dream... I had never had normal dreams but I didn't know why I was dreaming about what another cat was doing.
Mint woke up when I shook my head, she looked around a bit confused.
"What's going on? Is something attacking us?" She asked me. I felt a bit bad for waking her up, she looked and sounded like she was a bit tired. It was early in the morning but there was still a bit of light for me to see her.
"No I just had a weird dream... Go back to sleep, I can see you are still tired." I said to her. She nodded to me and then she happily fell back into her sleep.
It actually kind of surprised me, she must be even more tired than I thought she was in the first place. Normally she would have told me that she was fine and she could make it, but not today.
I got up from the little cave that we had slept in last night, I would go hunting for the both of us, I knew she still wasn't steady and on her feet enough for her to go hunting. She would probably tell me otherwise if I went with her, but I knew she was not ready.
I sniffed at the air and caught just a few scents. I had to keep in mind that I would have to be hunting for the both of us.
I smelt the squirrel closer by, it was bigger, enough to fill her up a lot since she was still healing and I began heading towards it.
Once I was close enough to it I did the hunting stance that I normally did and ran after it. I jumped into the air and easily caught it. I smiled happily, and then I smelt the air once again to try and smell if there was anything else for me to catch.
But I smelt something a little bit different. It smelt almost like there was another cat close by, I was a bit afraid because Lionblaze had told me about rogues, I didn't really want to get into a fight, I would just have to hope that it was a friendly rogue.
Suddenly I heard someone yell from right behind me. I spun around and saw a big brown cat that was staring right at me with a little bit of anger in his voice.
"Nice catch... Bring it over... This is our territory..."