username: Nosifer
clan: BeetleClan
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cat's name: Sixpaw -> Splashfang
cat's gender: Male
cat's age: 8m (16 when joining)
prompt fill: 655 words total
He can feel everyone’s eyes on him. He can’t see them staring, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know they are. He tried to ignore it, to just focus on his training, but he just couldn’t quite manage the crouch he was taught.
Sixpaw growled with frustration. The others were always quick to see his extra legs and treat him like he was special, but no one ever took them into account when trying to teach him! This hunting crouch was case and point.
Sixpaw leaped towards the twig he was using for training. He missed by several rabbit-lengths, and landed awkwardly on his side. He got to his feet, ready to try again, when a voice caught his attention.
“Poor kit. He can’t even see where he’s aiming. It’s such a shame he can’t make better use of those extra legs.”
Seething with rage, Sixpaw hissed in the direction of the voice, before storming off. He’s tried to tell them that no, it was the other way around, he was fine being blind, it was these dung-brains telling him what to do with his middle legs without knowing anything about how they worked that threw him off, but they always just shook their heads and sighed. ‘Poor kit’, is what they’d say.
Sixpaw made his way to the nearest pond. He sat among the reeds, listening to the water. He could hear the fish’s splashes pause, before resuming as though nothing happened. Oh great, so even the fish see him as a harmless kitten. Sixpaw growled at the water, hoping they would get the message. They did not.
“Why am I even sitting here, this is stupid.” Sixpaw muttered to himself.
He took a deep breath in, and the familiar stink of swamp filled his nose. There were no cats nearby. That, at least, was relaxing. No one around to tell him what he felt, no unneeded (or unwanted) sympathies, no one was around to say ‘oh poor little Sixpaw, completely unable to make use of the gift that is six legs, what a shame that this flea-ridden badgerface will never be known for anything other than having six legs.’
Oh, of course he’ll always be known as ‘that cat with six legs’. It was in his name, after all. What would his warrior name be? Sixfeet? Sixlegs? Sixlimbs? What else could it possibly be!?
Sixpaw’s tail lashed through the reeds, startling the bugs gathered in the tall plants. The bugs buzzed around for a bit, before circling back to the same set of reeds, clearly believing there was no threat. Sixpaw bared his teeth, and with a cry he threw himself at the reeds, determined to tear apart as many of the sympathetic degraders as he could get his six paws on.
A tornado of bugs engulfed the pond as clumps of reed flew left and right, and the angered shouting of a young child echoed through the sky. When things finally grew still, Sixpaw stood in a nest of torn reeds and churned up mud. His shouting had devolved into sobbing, as three pairs of legs gripped the soft earth.
When Sixpaw’s sobs had petered out, he took a deep breath in. The calming absence of cats was still there, and he turned his head back to the pond. He could still hear the fish lazily swimming, like nothing had happened.
Sixpaw sat on the bank of the pond. He pushed away every thought about his mentor’s hunting instructions. He would let his own thoughts carry him. He waited, listening. Suddenly, both his front and middle paws shot out, dipping into the water. He didn’t hit anything at first, but then he moved his paws in a scooping motion, and when his paws exited the water, a fat fish was sitting in his claws.
Sixpaw listened to the other fish swimming away from him in a panic. Not so harmless now, right?
