50 Fun Facts About Warrior Cats

'Erin Hunter', the credited author of Warriors, is what?

The team, working with HarperCollins and the packager Working Partners, includes Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Victoria Holmes and Tui Sutherland. Holmes plans each plot and the others take turns writing.

The surname 'Hunter' was picked partly so the books would shelve next to which other animal fantasy series?

Brian Jacques's mouse-abbey saga was the obvious comparison.

Which member of the Erin Hunter team creates the plot of every Warriors book before the others write it?

HarperCollins asked her in 2001 to come up with a fantasy about cats, a subject she was not especially interested in until she found themes she cared about.

Who wrote the first two Warriors novels, Into the Wild and Fire and Ice?

Cary and Baldry alternated books through the early arcs, with Sutherland joining later.

In which year was Into the Wild, the first Warriors book, published?

HarperCollins released it in January 2003. By 2014 the series had spent 119 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

What is Rusty, the hero of Into the Wild, at the start of the book?

He leaves his Twoleg owners to join ThunderClan and is renamed Firepaw. The Clan cats' word for pets is 'kittypet', and it is not a compliment.

How many Clans of cats are there in the Warriors universe once the lost fifth Clan is counted?

ThunderClan, WindClan, RiverClan, ShadowClan and SkyClan. The first arc features only four; SkyClan's return is the story of A Vision of Shadows.

What is StarClan?

They send prophecies and omens, and it is StarClan that grants a new leader nine lives at the Moonstone.

What prophecy does Bluestar receive about ThunderClan's future in Into the Wild?

The flame-coloured kittypet Rusty is the fire in question, though it takes the Clan a long time to accept it.

What warrior name does Firepaw receive at the end of Into the Wild?

Graypaw becomes Graystripe in the same ceremony. Firestar comes much later, when he receives his nine lives.

Which ambitious ThunderClan warrior murdered the deputy Redtail in the hope of taking his place?

Ravenpaw witnessed it, which is why Firepaw and Graypaw smuggle him out of the Clan to a barn for his own safety.

Where do Firepaw and Graypaw take Ravenpaw to keep him safe from the traitor he witnessed?

He lives there happily with the loner Barley for the rest of the series, appearing in his own manga trilogy.

Which exiled ShadowClan medicine cat does Firepaw meet on his first solo hunt?

The grumpy old she-cat becomes ThunderClan's medicine cat and, it is later revealed, is the mother of the tyrant Brokenstar.

Which ShadowClan tyrant is secretly the son of a medicine cat, a breach of the code she hid for years?

The ShadowClan leader who drove WindClan from the moor was born to a medicine cat in breach of the code, a secret Yellowfang carried for years.

In Fire and Ice, Fireheart and Graystripe are sent to bring home which Clan, driven from the moors by ShadowClan?

The moor-runners are the fastest cats in the forest and the smallest Clan, which is why they were easy to drive out.

Graystripe breaks the warrior code by falling in love with a she-cat from which Clan?

Silverstream dies giving birth to their kits, Feathertail and Stormfur, whom Graystripe takes to live in RiverClan for a time.

How was Cinderpaw crippled, forcing her to become a medicine cat instead of a warrior?

The Thunderpath is the cats' name for a road; the 'monsters' on it are cars. Cinderpelt went on to train Leafpool.

Cloudkit, later Cloudtail, is brought into ThunderClan as a kit. Who is his mother?

The Clan is slow to accept another kittypet-born cat. He grows up to be a warrior, if a sceptical one about StarClan.

Where does Firestar receive his nine lives from StarClan?

The glittering stone under Highstones is where leaders and medicine cats meet StarClan in the forest days; after the move to the lake it is the Moonpool.

In The Darkest Hour, which group of alley cats does the exiled ThunderClan traitor bring to fight the Clans?

The alliance backfires spectacularly: their leader Scourge kills Tigerstar rather than take orders from him.

How does Scourge kill the ShadowClan leader who summoned his gang from the Twolegplace?

The small black cat with the dog-tooth collar slices him from chin to tail. Firestar then kills Scourge in the great battle, losing a life himself.

Which ThunderClan deputy is killed by the alley-cat enforcer Bone in the first arc's final battle?

The apprentices then take Bone down together. Graystripe becomes deputy in Whitestorm's place.

Who is Firestar's mate, and mother of his two daughters?

She began the series sneering at the kittypet apprentice. Spottedleaf, the medicine cat Firepaw first loved, died in Into the Wild.

Which medicine cat secretly bore Hollyleaf, Jayfeather and Lionblaze?

A medicine cat is forbidden to have kits, so Squirrelflight raised them as her own.

What is Jayfeather's disability?

He can also walk into other cats' dreams, one of the three powers of the Power of Three arc. His brother Lionblaze cannot be wounded in battle.

What supernatural gift does Lionblaze have?

The prophecy of the three said kin of Firestar's kin would hold the power of the stars in their paws. Hollyleaf, to her grief, had no power at all.

Bramblestar, who leads ThunderClan after Firestar, is the son of which cat?

He spent his youth proving he was not his father. His mate is Squirrelflight, who eventually leads ThunderClan herself as Squirrelstar.

In Omen of the Stars, the spirits of which place, led by the first arc's great villain, prepare to attack the Clans?

The Dark Forest is where the wicked go instead of StarClan; its cats train living warriors in their dreams for the Great Battle.

In The New Prophecy arc, what forces the Clans to abandon their original home?

The Twolegs' 'monsters' tear up the trees for a road. The Clans journey to a new home around a lake, guided by a badger named Midnight.

Feathertail dies saving which group of cats from a mountain lion?

The Tribe live behind a waterfall in the mountains and had prophesied that a silver cat would save them from Sharptooth.

Which arc is a prequel set before the events of Into the Wild, telling how the five groups were founded?

It follows cats leaving the mountains for the forest, and gives origin stories to Thunder, Wind, River, Shadow and Sky themselves.

In The Broken Code arc, which StarClan cat cuts off StarClan from the living Clans and possesses Bramblestar?

The grey warrior's grudge went back to Squirrelflight rejecting him. Bramblestar's spirit is left wandering while an impostor rules ThunderClan.

How many books make up the eighth arc?

Every main arc has six books. Standalone Super Editions, novellas, field guides and manga fill the gaps between them.

Which 17th-century English botanist's herbal is the source for the remedies used by medicine cats?

So cobwebs really do stop bleeding and marigold really is used on wounds, more or less. Poppy seeds for pain and catmint for greencough are also from Culpeper.

Which real English woodland did the series' plotter cite as inspiring the first arc's setting?

The southern forest's mix of woodland, heath and streams maps neatly onto ThunderClan, WindClan and RiverClan territory.

Roughly how many copies has the Warriors series sold worldwide?

It has been translated into 38 languages. The original English-language manga were produced with Tokyopop.

In 2016 which company bought the rights to make a Warriors film?

Variety broke the news in October 2016. Fans have been waiting ever since.

Which other animal-fantasy series is NOT written under the Erin Hunter name?

Wings of Fire is Tui Sutherland writing under her own name. Seekers is about bears, Survivors about dogs and Bravelands about African animals.

What did the four Clans call themselves when they united against the alley cats?

StarClan's prophecy had spoken of lion and tiger meeting in battle. Tigerstar's forced alliance had been the TigerClan.

For how many weeks had Warriors appeared on the New York Times bestseller list as of November 2014?

The paperback of Into the Wild alone sold over 150,000 copies in 2008, five years after publication.

Which publisher has released every Warriors book since Into the Wild in 2003?

It was the publisher who asked editor Victoria Holmes in 2001 for a fantasy novel about cats; she was not especially interested in cats at the time.

Which ThunderClan medicine cat receives the 'fire' prophecy at the start of Into the Wild?

She is murdered later in the same book when ShadowClan cats sneak into the camp to steal kittens, and the exiled Yellowfang eventually takes her place.

How often do the four Clans meet peacefully at a Gathering?

Firepaw and Graypaw attend their first one as apprentices, where Brokenstar announces that ShadowClan has driven out the whole of WindClan.

In Omen of the Stars, which cat is revealed to be the third cat of the prophecy?

The reveal corrects the assumption of the previous arc, Power of Three, in which Hollyleaf turned out to have no power at all.

Who joined the Erin Hunter team to write Forest of Secrets, the third Warriors novel?

She also wrote the fifth and sixth books of the first arc, and names Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Ursula K. Le Guin as her biggest influences.

Which rogue leads the group that nearly disbands a Clan in A Vision of Shadows?

The sixth arc follows Alderheart, Violetshine and Twigbranch as they help the lost fifth Clan, SkyClan, settle beside the lake.

Holmes first named Tigerclaw what, until an editor noted cats wouldn't know the word?

Clan names come in two parts that reflect appearance, personality or habits, but both halves must belong to the world the cats actually know.

In 2024 Coolabi signed a deal with which company to make an animated Warriors series?

The show will adapt The Prophecies Begin, with a tentative 2028 release in China and South East Asia and a Disney+ home elsewhere.

Into how many languages has the Warriors series been translated?

The Chinese editions come with 3-D trading cards tucked inside the novels; the first, Into the Wild, shipped with a card of Firepaw.

In A Starless Clan, which cat ultimately chooses RiverClan's new leader?

The eighth arc opens with RiverClan's leader and deputy both dead and StarClan silent about a successor, stoking unrest over the rewritten warrior code.