Just when she thought they would have to turn back or risk getting lost, Leafstar crawled under a low-growing hazel branch and emerged into a clearing. In front of her rose a huge pile of Twoleg waste: bulging, shiny black pelts, some of them split and spilling out their contents onto the ground; squared-off red and gray stones like the ones Twolegs used to build their dens; huge things almost as big as monsters made of wood and some sort of soft pelt. The disgusting smells rolled out of the heap until they filled the air like fog.
“That… that’s truly horrible,” Leafstar whispered.
The other cats were pushing up behind her, and Leafstar stepped forward a couple of paces to let them into the clearing. For a few heartbeats they stood staring up at the mountain of waste.
“It’s Twoleg stuff,” Snookpaw declared, his voice full of contempt. “Why do they have to come and dump it here, in our territory?”
Ebonyclaw padded forward and sniffed at one of the huge things made of wood and pelts. “Why do they want to get rid of this?” she asked, bewildered. “It’s a sofa!”
“What’s a sofa?” Patchfoot growled, eyeing the object suspiciously.
“Twolegs keep them in their dens,” Snookpaw explained, unable to hide his glee that he knew something his Clanmate didn’t. “And that thing there’s a chair. The Twolegs sit on them.” He licked one front paw. “They’re pretty comfortable, actually.”
“Chairs, bricks, cushions…” Shorty was stalking around the outer edge of the pile. “Some Twoleg has cleared out the whole of their den!”
“There’s chicken here.” Cora had padded closer to the pile and was sniffing something that had spilled out of one of the black pelts. “Any cat want some?”
“You’d eat that?” Patchfoot gasped. “It looks as if it’s been dead for a moon!”
“Where we come from, you’d be glad of it,” Cora replied, gulping down some of the pale crow-food.
Leafstar was appalled, though she tried to hide it. These cats must be starving! She crept closer to the mound. With every heartbeat she was more outraged that Twolegs would leave a disgusting heap like this in the middle of the forest, destroying the territory with its stink and filth.
She was just stretching out her neck to sniff one of the soft pelt-things, when she heard the scuttle of tiny paws coming from inside the heap. The wedge-shaped head of a rat poked out from a gap beneath a piece of wood, its eyes glittering with hostility.
Startled, Leafstar leaped back. Even though the rat vanished at the same time, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the dark hole where it had appeared. Now she could hear the sounds of more rats inside the pile, squeaking and chewing and rustling with sharp yellow teeth and pointed paws, their naked tails flicking and coiling like tiny snakes…
The whole heap is infested with them!
“We’d better get back to camp and report this,” Patchfoot meowed at her shoulder.
“You’re right,” Leafstar replied, striving to make her voice as steady as his. “We must call a Clan meeting and decide what to do.”
“But it’s no big deal, surely?” Shorty protested as the patrol began to move off. “What’s wrong with a few rats?”
“I don’t see why we can’t hunt them,” Cora put in. “The Clan would eat well for days with the prey from here.”
Leafstar didn’t stop to argue. Cats who hadn’t survived the terrible battle at the edge of Twolegplace would find it hard to understand why every hair on her pelt was prickling with horror.
As she sprang down the last couple of tail-lengths into the camp, Leafstar spotted Sparrowpelt returning with his patrol; they had been renewing the scent markers on the other side of the gorge. Sharpclaw was padding along the trail beside the river with his hunting patrol behind him; all of them carried fresh-kill.
Leafstar bounded across to intercept Sharpclaw as he headed for the fresh-kill pile. “I want you to round up all the senior warriors,” she meowed. “Every cat who was here when we had the battle with the rats.”
Sharpclaw cocked his head to one side. “Trouble?”
Leafstar nodded tensely. “I’ll tell you when we’re all together. Make sure Clovertail and Echosong come as well. We’ll meet in my den.”
“Can I come, too?” Stick asked, rising from a flat rock on the edge of the stream and bounding over to them.
“Sure you can,” Sharpclaw replied, just as Leafstar was opening her jaws to refuse.
The Clan leader flashed an annoyed look at her deputy. This is Clan business! We’re not even including the daylight-warriors, and it affects them. But she couldn’t argue with Sharpclaw in front of Stick, so she gave the Twolegplace cat a curt nod and headed toward the trail that led up to her den.
By the time she reached it her Clanmates were beginning to arrive. Cherrytail and Sparrowpelt padded through the entrance together, dipping their heads to their leader before sitting side by side with their tails wrapped around their paws. Patchfoot appeared, looking grim, and a few heartbeats later Clovertail followed, with Petalnose at her side. Clovertail’s belly was bigger than ever, and she was panting from the effort of the climb.
Sharpclaw and Stick were the last to appear, just behind Echosong, who slipped into the den and crouched beside the wall, her eyes fixed on Leafstar.
“That’s every cat,” the deputy announced. “What’s all this about?”
Leafstar explained what the patrol had found as quickly as she could, trying to make the Clan see and smell the hideous pile of rubbish in the forest.
“Rats!” Cherrytail exclaimed, exchanging a horrified glance with her brother Sparrowpelt. “Don’t say we have to go through all that again!”
“No, no, we can’t!” Petalnose’s voice rose in a piteous wail, and Leafstar knew that she was remembering the death of her mate, Rainfur. “We must all stay away from them—as far away as we can.”
She sat with her head bowed; Clovertail pressed up against her side and gave her ear a comforting lick.
Stick listened to the she-cats with a puzzled look in his eyes. When Petalnose had fallen silent, he turned to Leafstar. “What’s all the fuss about?” he meowed. “It’s only a few rats.”
“Only a few rats!” Patchfoot echoed, rolling his eyes.
“We’ve had problems with rats before,” Sharpclaw told the visitor, describing how a vast family of rats had attacked the cats in the gorge until their only option had been to take the battle to them and wipe them out.
“One of our warriors died,” he finished, “and all of us were injured. We can’t let these rats get strong enough to attack us again.”
The Twolegplace cat looked thoughtful. “We’re used to hunting rats for food,” he meowed. “Maybe we can help.”
Leafstar was about to thank him and assure him that the Clan could cope, when Sharpclaw forestalled her. “That would be great. What do you think we should do?”
That’s the second time Sharpclaw has made the decision for me. Leafstar twitched her tail irritably. But maybe we should listen to what Stick has to say. “Go ahead,” she told him.
“Okay, suppose this is the rubbish heap.” Sharpclaw pulled out several clawfuls of moss and bracken from Leafstar’s nest and piled it up in the middle of the den. “The rats are in the middle, right? I suggest we take a patrol—as many cats as we can spare. Some of us should circle the pile and find the entrances where the rats go in and out. Then we block up most of them—”
“Why not all of them?” Cherrytail interrupted, lashing her tail with excitement.
“Because we don’t want the rats trapped inside there,” the brown tom explained. “We want them gone. We want them to think they have a chance to escape. So we leave a couple of entrances unblocked, and put our best fighters just outside.” With one paw he poked two holes in the heap of bracken. “One or two cats climb over the dump to frighten the rats and chase them out. Then when they run out”—Stick slid out his claws—“no more problem.”