I read my first Warriors book in elementary school with my two best friends. When I say "together," I really mean it - the three of us would huddle together side by side with a book between us. We all read at different speeds, and the owner of the book (not me) was pretty strict about who could hold it. Turning every page is torture.
But we must read it this way, because Warrior: Wilderness is more or less the sacred text of our friendship. Of course, we loved Harry Potter like the other kids, and yes, we played some fairy tale games inspired by Pokemon and Scooby-Doo . However, our real passion lies in pretending to be cute animals in dire circumstances. One of our favorite recess games is simply called "Cat Dies." We play as characters from the Disney movie Aristocrats , valiantly struggling up a sheer cliff (i.e. on the wrong slide) before tragically falling to our deaths.
So when we found the Warriors, it was like we had dreamed it ourselves. An entire series of books about warrior cats? A cat with a great destiny on a spiritual quest? Cats that are often injured or killed in the heat of battle?
This was our most terrifying recess game of all, and it lasted until eleven o'clock.
Warrior: Wilderness by Erin Hunter, $11, Amazon
If you weren't too interested in cat Valhalla fantasies as a kid, allow me to give you a brief summary of Warriors (and I mean brief, because the original series currently has six sub-series, each containing six books, and A cast of characters that rivals the Marvel movies).
Basically, Rusty is a house cat who left his Twoleg owner and joined ThunderClan, one of four tribes of wildcats that lived in the woods behind his home. He's named "Firepaw" and thrust into a world of political intrigue and feline violence, where he learns that he may be the prophesied savior of the new clan.
Throughout the series, Firepaw grows from apprentice, to warrior (Fireheart), and finally to leader (Firestar). Subplots include illegitimate kittens, clan betrayal, corrupt politicians, a refugee crisis, and a pack of wild dogs tearing off half a kitten's face.
Is the plot original? No. I say this with due respect to the three or four authors who have written under the name Erin Hunter. Warriors borrows heavily from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (but with cats). There are hints of Game of Thrones , Redwall and Shakespeare (but still with cats).
But that doesn't matter, the series is a carbon copy of every other fantasy based on prophecies. The four tribes in the forest are very close to the four houses of Hogwarts, but that doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter that these books are stupid – and they do seem pretty stupid, especially from an adult perspective. These cats, whose names include Blackberrypelt and Sparrowflight, take their ancestral-based cat religion very seriously.
But to us, these Machiavellian cat conspiracies are new. It's not that stupid to us third-years that a cat named Tigerclaw breaks StarClan's sacred oath and betrays his leader, Bluestar.
For my friends and I, these books finally made sense of what we as readers want: We don't want cute chapter books about babysitters starting a club, or cute chapter books about teenagers learning the importance of friendship. We wanted a multi-layered epic about pets killing each other over land disputes.
In fact, we read Warriors so religiously that our fifth-grade teacher pulled us aside and intervened. According to her, we must start reading books with human protagonists. Of course, by then we were not just reading Warriors; We have expanded into a fantasy series about wolves, deer and mice. We promised we'd finish it off with an animal book and then immediately returned to our own and other people we knew's list of potential cat warrior names.
Warriors: Fire and Ice by Erin Hunter, $11, Amazon
Of course, as we grow older, we gradually reintroduce human-centered literature into our reading habits. I can confirm that almost all the books I read these days revolve almost entirely around humans (although my cat often places herself directly on top of the page I'm reading, regardless of the subject).
Still, I think about the Warriors from time to time, and not just when my cat stares wistfully out the window. Whenever I sit down to write something that feels too niche, something that might be considered silly, I think of Fireheart. Yes, of course, he's a goofy cat savior with a dramatic name from a series of very specific books. But he meant a lot to me when I was a kid.
Like most adults, I'm a little embarrassed to openly express my love for silly things. I worry that my fiction writing is too fantastical and my nonfiction writing is too unabashedly passionate about books like Game of Thrones and Warriors. I wonder if I should just put it away and pretend I don't care . But then I thought about those three kids, so excited to read a book about cat warriors, all huddled around a unique book. I remember feeling like Warriors understood me in a way that books about actual schoolchildren never could. I remember it’s good to write down everything you know… but it’s even better to write down what you care about .
...even if you care about the Cat Warrior Tribe.
