{"id":24873,"date":"2026-02-04T11:13:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T19:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=24873"},"modified":"2026-04-02T11:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T19:17:43","slug":"warrior-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/warrior-cats\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Warrior Cats\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A photo of a stack of Erin Hunter \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d books. | Photo from @erinhunterbooks on Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Feb. 4, 2026 | <\/span>Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief<\/span><\/p>\n

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Content warning: <\/b>this article discusses spoilers for the \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d franchise and fictional violence<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWarrior Cats\u201d is a massively popular children\u2019s book series of more than 50 books discussing cat clans in the wild. That\u2019s the simplest way to put it. If I were to be asked further, I\u2019d have to answer with caution as to not give away too much information about myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just kidding. I\u2019m going to say a lot of things about \u201cWarrior Cats,\u201d and way too much about my childhood.<\/span><\/p>\n

The series is like any other (just trust me here). Imagine a young male protagonist \u2014 handsome, adventurous, but lonely. He longs for connection, for others, and, one day, he finds them: the community he\u2019s been waiting for. But there\u2019s something brewing underneath it all \u2014 a child sees a member of the community kill an ally in cold blood, and tells only the main character. The protagonist must not only defeat him and reveal his charismatic ruse, but also protect the lives of his friends when in danger, all while falling in love and engaging in epic combat scenes.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then \u2026 that villain gets nine lives, has his organs ripped out in one go by a strange weakling that shows up with dog teeth around its neck, and then the protagonist kills that person and becomes the king? Yeah, okay, not really that normal of a story.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll name some other plotlines: forbidden romance, secret kids, twisted villains and cat murderers. Leaders who go crazy. Atheist cats that don\u2019t believe in cat heaven. Prophecies that bless cats and tell the future. Prophecies that give cats powers. All the cats from cat hell and cat heaven go to war. All legit \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d plots.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWarrior Cats\u201d mastered the writing triangle: to have an ongoing series, it needs characters that are different, characters that share proximity and outside forces. Unfortunately, when writing creatively, I often think about \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d and how well it pulled together groups and kept a plot moving.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uniquely, it gave its leaders nine lives, switched protagonists and always sought to add, never to take away. The series never got smaller. In fact, the clans only got bigger, and the plots only got more ambitious. Erin Hunter wove innate flaws into the clans \u2014 like supreme leadership and cat religion, of course \u2014 added some weird cat culture that can\u2019t be questioned and made a ton of money off of the series.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was something so intoxicating about two individuals divided by clan, separated by the gods, falling in love in secret while knowing either of their lives could be cut short at any moment by the wild dangers of the woods. Hearts are broken, cats are betrayed, cats die senselessly and without justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s unbelievable what a collection of middle-aged women can make someone feel. I still feel that way, picking up new Sarah J. Maas and Donna Tartt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWarrior Cats\u201d took normal tropes and turned them on their heads. It took gruesome deaths \u2014 which we love in media, like, hello, \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d \u2014 and somehow marketed them for children? Love affairs, cat birth scenes, kitten death? I\u2019m not sure how the Erin Hunter clan (the multiple authors under one pseudonym) did it. But children love animals, and animals love murder, I guess.<\/span><\/p>\n

My point is that \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d somehow, in some way, took adult topics and fed them to a young audience, which pretty pointedly wound me up the way that I am: obsessing over character development and demise, constantly writing and staying chronically online. I encountered \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d when I was around 10 years old on the internet, and, wow, did it really take a toll.<\/span><\/p>\n

I will say: \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d is marketed to, and read by, young children, when I believe it should be for an older range, purely because the content and scenes can be very graphic. While I was never running around the playground on my hands and knees, I was thinking about mature topics through the lens of fictional cats, and that did make for an interesting experience overall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some important context that I\u2019m extremely reluctant to share and have now printed forever and published online: I was obsessed \u2014 I mean, really obsessed \u2014 with \u201cWarrior Cats.\u201d For far too long. The exact age I really won\u2019t disclose \u2014 that would just be self-sabotage \u2014 but I was in high school when I stopped indulging in the franchise.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be more honest, I met the owner of a popular Roblox \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d roleplay game and we became fast friends at a young age. I spent every day, for multiple years, on this game. I made friends \u2014 some of whom I still talk to now \u2014 from that game. I\u2019m flying to officiate a wedding this summer for two people who met on that game \u2014 yes, really. The game got so popular online that we had to hop on a Zoom call with the Erin Hunter brand team to become an official \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d game, or else we\u2019d be copyrighted.<\/span><\/p>\n

It spurred me to write fanfiction after fanfiction (no, they\u2019ll never see the light of day, and no, I don\u2019t want to talk about it) to build my skills. Now, look at me: writing for money. I think I owe it to Erin Hunter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Honestly, I\u2019d still read the books now, but I would never have the courage to walk around with them. They were enjoyable, easy reads and only a little bit infuriating, like any decent story. Objectively, \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d was so unlike any other books I read as a kid that it stands out like a sore thumb, unforgettable and a little painful at times to recall.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to add that nobody I know from that game is a furry. Not that I\u2019d care. But, still.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact the author at howleditorinchief@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feb. 4, 2026 | Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief   Content warning: this article discusses spoilers for the \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d franchise and fictional violence   \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d is a massively popular children\u2019s book series of more than 50 books discussing cat clans in the wild. That\u2019s the simplest way to put it. If I were to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"\u2018Warrior Cats\u2019","_seopress_titles_desc":"What \u201cWarrior Cats\u201d revolutionized (and ruined)","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[338,2336,2338,7469,1936,9435,7891,9436,9433,3932,3441,4465,6434,6715,9434,9202],"class_list":["post-24873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-book","tag-cat","tag-cats","tag-child","tag-children","tag-childrens","tag-clan","tag-clans","tag-erin","tag-game","tag-hunter","tag-plot","tag-series","tag-story","tag-warrior","tag-wild"],"modified_by":"saragerrick","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24878,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24873\/revisions\/24878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}