Pine - Loner

[Fia]

Name: Pine

Prefix Meaning: His fur, while still damp after birth, was a reddish-brown color, reminding his mother of a pine tree’s bark; as it dried, it lightened, but the she-cat didn’t see any reason to change a perfectly good name. Also, his father's name was Rowan, so Pine and his sisters were given plant names in honor of him.

Suffix Meaning: N/A

Age: 28 moons

Rank: Loner

Clan: N/A

Description: Pine is a cat of medium size and strength, perhaps slightly on the small, slim side, but by no means feminine. His limbs are neatly proportioned to his body, as strong and muscled as necessary to survive in the wild but no more than that. He does not pack a particularly impressive amount of power in his neat paws, and his claws are not exceptionally sharp. He can defend himself well enough to stay alive long enough to run away, but is a rather poor fighter and avoids confrontations as best he can. He is, however, a skilled hunter, and can easily climb straight up tree trunks as a result of his preference to run from fights than battle them out.

His fur is primarily orange, a good strong color that covers his back, neck, ears, and eyes; it reaches halfway down his shoulders and, after a break of white, all the way down his tail. The front of his lower left hind leg is mostly orange as well, though a lighter shade, and there is a patch of the same color on each of his back legs. The only distinct tabby markings on his pelt are on his shoulders, face, and tail; rest of his ginger fur has very faint stripes, and parts of it are simply solid orange. The rest of his pelt is a soft, snowy white - that is, his lower front limbs, his entire back limbs, a strip along the middle of his stomach, his chest, his throat, the sides of his neck, and his muzzle. This fur, being on the lower half of him, is very easily and often dirtied - so basically, every time he lies down. Pine goes through great pains to keep his pelt clean, and often wishes he were simply orange all over.

Pine has a relatively handsome, very pleasant face, with kind, honest features and an ever courteous smile. His eyes are a light, soft green, with just a hint of yellow in bright light, and twinkle kindly most of the time. He's got a pretty pink nose in a soft white muzzle, from which whiskers of the same color sprout, and has small, neat, pink-lined ears perched on top of his head.

Personality: Pine is an easygoing, good-natured cat, courteous with strangers, friendly with acquaintances, kind to those in need of help or sympathy. A born gentleman, so to speak, Pine is always conscious of his manners and the effects of his words and deeds on others. Rudeness simply appalls him, and he will never respond to it in kind - he will very politely express his disapproval, or else excuse himself graciously from the situation. Not necessarily formally, but always with the utmost courtesy. He is not a self-absorbed cat, and will happily lend a helping paw whenever it is asked for, but he does not go searching for ways to do good in the world. He's just too nice and too polite to refuse his assistance. He's an honest young tom, too, and will always keep his word, always come through on a promise, and can always be trusted with a secret.

When left to himself, Pine doesn't care to do anything in particular; that is, he has no goals or plans for his life. He likes to wander through the woods and listen to the trees, stretch out in fields and doze in the sun, sit by streams and watch the water bubble over pebbles, cascade over boulders, and swirl in little pools. There is a mossy log he particularly likes, fallen across a pretty little stream, where he loves to lie and watch sunlight dance on the water as it filters through the treetops. Now, obviously Leafbare is hard on his own, but rather like a squirrel or chipmunk, Pine has learned to stuff himself on plump fresh-kill in Leaf-fall and begin storing prey as soon as the ground starts freezing; he knows how difficult it is to find any scent under frozen earth, and hides his stored food cleverly. When it comes to feeding himself, and to his own comfort in general, Pine's courtesy for others lessens somewhat - sure, he'd give away a piece of prey to a starving-to-death stranger, but he catches as much as he can for himself.

While he is a kind and helpful cat, Pine enjoys his solitary life; he finds that too much company stretches his courtesy to its limits, and so for fear of growing offensive, he avoids large groups of cats. That doesn't mean he despises company - he in fact visits his mother and sisters often, and is always happy to spend an afternoon with a friend. He sometimes entertains the notion of having a mate one day, and he supposes that falling in love would be a very nice thing. Kits, he's not so sure about, but he isn't opposed to the idea - it just makes him a little nervous, which is probably fairly normal for a tom-cat his age, with no experience with kits at all. It's not that he doesn't like kits, just that he would worry about providing for them, and that he fears he doesn't have the capacity to love them unconditionally as a father is supposed to. Surely he would - he's just not quite aware of it now.

History: Pine was born safe and sound in a the hollow log that had long been his parents' home. The loner she-cat, Pebbles, had total of three kits that day, the little ginger and white tom and his two sisters, one golden-brown and one silver. Pine, Maple, and Willow, all named in honor of Rowan, the father who had died of severe injuries he recieved while holding off a fox just long enough for Pebbles to escape. Half a moon had passed since the ginger tom's death, and the kits' mother had survived without him only thanks to the kindness of a young traveller. This stranger, a gray tabby who called himself Fog, stopped out of sympathy and stayed to look after the struggling she-cat; as he explained, he had set out recently to make a home for himself, and this forest was as pleasant as any he had seen. It was no trouble to do a little extra hunting. When the kits were born, the soft-hearted tom simply fell in love with them, and became a sort of stepfather to Pine and his littermates. He would hunt -luckily an easy task, given the season of early Greenleaf- for Pebbles, with whom he had by then formed a strong friendship, and made the little trio of kits the light of his life. From this loving father-figure, Pine would learn to be ever kind and courteous to strangers.

Now, their little hollow log was a cozy home, well hidden in a thicket of brambles that had long ago grown around it. The kits had just enough room, between the brambles and the log, to play outside, in a little front yard of sorts. Naturally they tried to venture out past the thorny barrier, only to be shooed back in by whichever adult was taking his or her turn to stay home and kit-sit while the other hunted. Once in a while, they got away, always following Willow as the natural leader; each time, Fog would find them hiding in clumps of ferns or thorns, whispering and shushing each other, squirming and giggling. And each time, he would herd them home, scolding gently all the way. Somehow, they never got away when Pebbles was home, which they assumed was because she kept a closer eye on them (little did they know that, once they were two moons old, Fog would watch them slip away and follow closely, keeping them always in sight and unaware of his protective presence).

Eventually, though, both mother and 'father' agreed that they should see more of the world; and so began their little day-trips, to the meadow, to the stream, sometimes as far as the strange area called 'Twoleg-place'. They made new acquaintances, and Pebbles ran into old friends sometimes; her brother Owl, grizzled old Fuzz, young Twist with the ever-curled tail. Pine loved to meet these cats, and was taught to always be polite, especially around his mother's old aunt, Feathers. The aged she-cat, completely unimpressed, took it upon herself to "teach the youngsters proper manners"; the kits naturally found these lectures and lessons utterly excruciating, though Pine minded less than the bold, lively Maple and the already classy-when-she-wanted-to-be, "shut up, you old fleabag" Willow. Young Pine privately stored his great-aunt's teachings in the back of his mind, and thus learned to be always respectful and polite.

As the trio grew up, though, they visited family less and began to learn to look after themselves. Fog taught them how to hunt; Pebbles taught them how to defend themselves. Maple preferred to fight but excelled at hunting in golden grass. Willow was a natural at both, far surpassing her littermates with no apparent effort. Pine enjoyed sparring, but found that hunting came more naturally to him, and discovered it to be an almost calming, peaceful task; not because killing little creatures somehow brought him inner peace, but because he was free to wander, and to allow his mind to do so.

At the age of eight moons, Pine found himself in a fight, as young toms tend to do. His opponent wasn’t any older or bigger than himself, but he was tougher, a rogue cat travelling with his father. The quarrel’s cause was minor, just a disagreement over fresh-kill that Pine has turned his back on for a moment to sniff around for more prey. The stranger –simply called Black– had picked up the mouse with a ‘you snooze, you lose’ attitude, and while Pine would have gladly given him the prey had the scrawny black tom only asked, the two came to blows when Pine lost his temper with the stranger’s attempt to steal. He was in the process of more or less getting his pelt shredded when Fog burst into the clearing; in the same moment, a massive black cat, who later introduced himself as Soot, charged in and broke apart the wrestling youths with a couple of solid cuffs over the head. A few tense minutes later, the matter was resolved with reluctant apologies on Pine and Black’s parts and eye-rolls of exasperated relief on that of the fathers. They went their separate ways that day, but Pine later discovered that Soot and Black had chosen to make their home in a nearby hollow tree trunk. The young cats were naturally still suspicious of each other, but forgiving little Pine’s attempts at friendliness would eventually win over the reserved dark tom, and over the next few moons, the two would grow to be great friends. To this day, Black is the brother Pine wasn’t born with.

It was another uneventful ten moons before Pine finally decided that he would like to find a place of his own; Pebbles and Fog had no wish for any of the ‘kits’ to leave, and Maple never did. Willow had struck out on her own moons before, though she hadn’t gone far; she only wanted to live her own life, not to escape from her family. In any case, Pine promised his parents that he would never go too far, that he would visit often, and that he would always be around if they needed him for anything. And so he left in search of a home for himself. But he didn’t go alone; his old friend Black accompanied him, and together they found a long-abandoned badger set at the edge of a field, more than big enough for a pair of young toms. This brought them closer to the ‘Clans’ that travelers had told tales about, and out of curiosity, the two set out to see for themselves if the tales were true. Sure enough, they found themselves challenged at what they found to be a border with a bunch of cats called “DaylightClan” or some such thing, and in high spirits with their success, cheerfully agreed to leave and never come back. Life for the past eight moons has been slow and quiet, with nothing of any significance happening besides Black’s moving out, just across the field for the sake of each truly having his own space.


Picture: {Pine}
{Pine, close up}

[sunfrost]

How can I say no? Beautiful, beautiful cat who doesn't have a sob story history yet is interesting! I love it. Are you going to create Black too?

Accepted!

[Fia]

I'll probably create Black, yeah. =D Thanks, Sunfrost!