User:Eulalia459678/Essays/Rainfur's Feelings

Rainfur’s Feelings

As we all know, in the book Firestar’s Quest, Firestar and Sandstorm went upriver from ThunderClan, trying to find and rebuild the ancient Clan of SkyClan. For those of you who don’t know about SkyClan, I’ll go into a little history lesson. WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD! SkyClan was one of the five Clans of the forest. Yes, there were once five Clans. But since Twolegs destroyed their territory to make the Twoleg place (a recurring theme in the series, Twolegs destroying nature) they (SkyClan) went to the other Clans to ask for some territory during a Gathering. They brought their entire Clan, asked for some land to be given to them, and were rejected. They then left the forest, and were never seen again. Or, not seen again until Firestar’s Quest. So, as you might have noticed, the title of this is “Rainfur’s Feelings”. So who is Rainfur? As you may or may not know, Firestar attempts to rebuild the lost Clan with rogues, and even a few kittypets here and there. One of these is named Scratch. He helped Firestar by introducing him to the rogues living near the gorge. One of the cats he was introduced to was named Rainfur. He was adamantly against joining SkyClan, and let them know that. But later, he joins! Why? I have a few theories. As you know, he had a mate named Petal (later Petal nose), who was a kittypets. Her Twoleg was very abusive, and starved her. Once she had her kits, the Twoleg gave her even less. So then Rainfur remember the cats he had refused to join, and says to himself, “I think I’ll use them to rescue her!”. He goes to the gorge, finds Firestar, and asks if they will help him to rescue her. They agree, and go rescue her. Petal decides to join SkyClan, and so does Rainfur. But he just said he didn’t want to join, didn’t he? So why would he choose to join now? Was it just because of his mate, or did he change his mind? Now, if your mate was leaving the kittypet life to join a Clan, and you might never see him or her again, don’t you think you would go with them if you really loved him or her? So did Rainfur join because he saw the protection it would give him by having a group of cats defending him, or did he join because he wanted to, or did he join because he wanted to stay with his mate and kits? If he saw the protection it would serve, he would have had plenty of time to think it over, and may have changed his mind on the way to ask for help. Or maybe he only joined because he and his mate, Petal, wanted a better life for their kits, Mintkit and Sagekit. That makes the most sense to me. Behind door number three is that he actually wanted to join. He may have joined because he actually wanted to see what it was like to have friends. That may be true; we don’t know, and probably never will, now that he is dead. But that leads to another point. If he gave up his life in service of his Clan, wouldn’t that mean that he was truly a Clan cat? Or did he just want to protect his family? Did he really care about his fellow Clan-mates, or was he a selfish, self-centered cat, caring only about his mate? This leads to yet another point. If he didn’t want to fight the rats, couldn’t he just run away and bring his kits and mate? Or maybe the kits were too young to travel that far. Or maybe he thought that the rats would find him. But then, when Leafdapple is receiving her nine lives, he appears in StarClan, and said he was glad that they joined SkyClan, and that he doesn’t blame Firestar for his death. So whichever way you look at it, he ended up happy.