Post by Sparrow on Mar 25, 2017 15:04:36 GMT
- Name-
[li]Age-[/li]
63 moons
[li]Rank-[/li]
Medicine cat
[li]Clan-[/li]
FerryClan
[li]Description-[/li]
A medium-build she-cat with dark ginger fur, tabby patterns, and some patches of white on her belly and chin. Her eyes are dark turquoise.
[li]Appearance-[/li]
Hollycloud is an average-sized she-cat with a compact build and medium length fur. Her pelt is a very dark ginger, with an overlay of darker tabby stripes that help her to blend into the shadows when she needs to, and patches of white break through every now and then under the ginger. Most of her belly is white, snaking up her throat to develop into a patch of white on her chin and upper lip, her tail tip and right front paw are her only other white patches. Her left ear has a small notch in it from an old fight, but otherwise she carries no visible marks on her body of previous violent encounters. Her eyes are a dark turquoise, and she generally appears calm and collected, with few things managing to ruffle her fur.
[li]Personality-[/li]
Calm ~ Capable ~ Private ~ Assertive ~ Blunt
Over her years, Hollycloud has developed a pragmatic and laid-back approach to things that used to worry her in her younger years. It would take a lot to get under her skin, and she knows it and uses it to her advantage in taking on difficult patients and cases that may have frustrated or disgusted her peers, finding that she takes most of her enjoyment in life from practical daily care of other cats and doing right by them. She regards everyone in her clan to be one of her patients whether they are ill or not, and will often be seen checking up on cats, chatting to the elders, and lying down to laugh with queens about their kits' antics. If you followed her around on a normal day, you would be forgiven for thinking that she had no life outside of her craft. Being a medicine cat has absorbed her, and she rarely leaves camp, but when she does she usually heads out alone and doesn't really tell anyone where she is going.
The she-cat doesn't mince her words, which is appreciated by some and abrasive to others, and it has had mixed results as she has gone through her life, but she maintains that she believes un-sugared honesty is always the best policy. She holds her rank as the eldest and most experienced medicine cat in her clan, and is not afraid to use that authority. She will often pick apart and examine how her fellow medicine cats are carrying out their work, offering rather to-the-point but constructive feedback, and is increasingly critical the less experience the other cat has. The high standards she sets for others are the ones she holds herself to, and one of the few things that will truly haunt her are the mistakes she makes. She remembers each and every one of them like a mark on her heart, and it drives her to be increasingly critical of her care and that of others.
Hollycloud does believe in StarClan, but has little interest in messages they may send her. She is spiritually clumsy and fumbles messages often, so has gradually turned away from StarClan and more towards the practical task of healing. She trusts her colleagues to handle the messages StarClan sends, as she knows she is awful at it.
[li]History-[/li]
Hollykit and her sister Maplekit were born like many FerryClan kittens, warm and safe from the outside world in the confines of the derelict building that made up the camp. The wind could not touch them, and their mother Poppyclaw's warm body surrounded them. They had a fortunate and sheltered kithood, romping around in camp and only vaguely understanding what a storm or weather might be beyond the ambient temperature of the camp. Maplekit was the bigger and more confident of the two, but Hollykit's sharp tongue kept her sister in line whenever she thought she might have the upper paw, and the pair enjoyed a happy and childish friendship together.
As they drew closer to apprenticeship, the sisters began to naturally drift apart. Maplekit yearned for the outdoors, but Hollykit was perfectly happy to never have to go out there if she didn't have to, and began to spend more and more of her time following the medicine cats around and poking her nose into their business. Even as they began their apprentice training, Hollypaw never really had the heart for fighting and hunting, always spending any and all of her spare time following the medicine cats around. It was only natural that she would be taken under their wing once she turned 9 moons, and the "gentle" push from StarClan of a holly leaf blowing into her future mentor's face was really only seen as a formality.
At first, Hollypaw thrived on it. She padded after her mentor with a puffed out chest and confidence in every pawstep. She was going to be the best medicine cat EVER and she was so filled with self-importance that she got numerous eye-rolls and snarky retorts from those around her. Her mentor tried gently to cool the flames of her rapidly growing head, but reasoned that as time went on the simple practicality of not always being able to save their patients, or perhaps a violent encounter where a warrior saved her, would bring Hollypaw smartly back into her place. Of course it did, and it was the latter event that brought down Hollypaw's insistence that she had become one of the clan's elite. She was out collecting herbs alone on a particularly busy day, not far from camp, when an aggressive loner spotted her and decided they would have some fun by attacking a young and inexperienced apprentice. Hollypaw was taken completely by surprise, struggling and screaming bloody murder as the larger tom tried to shred her ears to ribbons to send a message to FerryClan. Lucky for her, he only managed to nick her left ear before Maplepaw and her mentor came charging onto the scene and sent him running with a few well-placed claws and teeth. Hollypaw was rather sullen for a while after that, but deeply grateful, and learned her lesson that she wasn't somehow more special than any other cat in the clan.
Time went on, and Hollypaw began to feel increasingly nervous as she realised that all the responsibility that she had craved was actually terrifying. She would lay awake at night, thinking of mistakes she might have made the day before, and as she learned more and more, her mentor was giving her increasingly more time to see her patients by herself and to sort things out for herself. The growing responsibilities increased, until the point where catastrophe struck. Hollypaw was 15 moons old at the time when The Drought struck, a heatwave combined with minimal rainfall that left FerryClan parched and overheating. The medicine den was overflowing with unwell cats with varying degrees of dehydration and heatstroke, and there was no time to monitor Hollypaw anymore. Panting and sun-brained herself, the she-cat was forever darting between her patients, trying to decide who was most unwell, who needed water over someone else, desperately devising ways to cool cats down in the heatwave. This was the time of Hollypaw's first big mistake. She was rushed off her paws, and failed to notice the warning signs in an unwell kit until it was too late, and he passed away from dehydration and heatstroke.
The death hit her hard, but she was not to be allowed the time to digest what had happened, for RootClan was on the attack and every day warriors were coming home with physical wounds to add to their heat-exhaustion. By the time it was all over, and the water returned, Hollypaw was dazed and heartbroken. She thought her world was ending, that she was a horrible medicine cat, that she shouldn't be trusted with her patients, so she started leaving camp more and more often to wander around the town by herself. It was during one of these miserable journeys that she was seen by a human sitting in its garden. It called to her, laying out some water, and Hollypaw begrudgingly padded up to accept it. As a FerryClan cat, she had a healthy fear of humans but equally a healthy respect of how much one could get out of them if one played their cards right. The human just watched her, so she happily drank the water from him. She would often stop by his house on her walks, as he was always there at certain hours of the day and they both seemed to enjoy the others company, speaking to each other about their troubles but knowing the other wouldn't understand them.
As time went on, she managed to cope with her internal struggles about her medical abilities. Her mentor told her about his own mistakes, and she grew more confident as she saw that she was actually quite capable, and that she had made an honest mistake in stressful circumstances. She still travelled to see her human sometimes, but less often. He didn't seem to mind, and would even allow her into his home on occasion, though she was careful to stay near an escape route when that happened, in case he tried to trap her. It was inside that she discovered his strange treasure-trove of belongings. Big images of animals on his walls, and strange bottles of weird smelling liquid. He smelled like animals and a sharp/bitter scent, and sometimes he would have injured animals in his home, but they never stayed long. Hollypaw grew intrigued by his funny activities, and would often go just to watch him.
Moons passed, and Hollycloud received her name, working tirelessly in her role as gradually she became older and more experienced. Cats around her grew with her, and so too did some of them pass away. She has yet to tell anyone about her visits to her human, worried that they might call her a kittypet or exclude her, though she has never accepted food from him.[/ul]
- Family-
Mother: Poppyclaw (Elder, 120 moons old (10 years))
Father:
Siblings: Mapleclaw (Senior warrior, 60 moons old (5 years))
Mate: None
Kits: None
- Genetics-
Semi-cobby ~ Medium length fur ~ Red fur ~ Mackerel tabby ~ Green eyes ~ 1 gene for white spotting