Rona had been exiled.

A couple seasons ago, Lil had caught her eating a fish.

Lil had ordered all her cats not to go into the sewers, and that was where Rona had caught the fish.

But Rona knew the secret passageways of the Tallwalkers' den-maze and the safeties and dangers of their Stone-paths, and she was always able to get away from Catching-Tallwalkers and Lil's goons.

Over the snow-fall and warming-leaf seasons, she had made a group, however small. There was a former house cat, Pisces, and her three kits, Leo, Capricorn, and Aquarius.

Leo was the biggest and most daring of the three, and was a dark red-brown color with even darker stripes. Capricorn was a white tom with blue eyes and very dreamy and absentminded. Aquarius was the only girl, a silver-pelted she-cat who wasn't quiet or loud, or dreamy or grounded.

Rona had been observing Lil's group for break-offs and outcasts for all of warming-leaf and a bit of snow-fall. There hadn't been even one.

Well, until Reed.

He had taken Pisces as a mate even though it had been forbidden to take house cats as mates. He had planned to leave the group and live with Pisces, who, after her kits were born, had joined Rona's group.

But when Reed was killed, Rona had known there was something off. She had investigated and learned that a rogue named Night had murdered him, just for being in the way.

Rona's group was unknown to any of the rivaling groups, whether it were Han's, Jef's, Stix's, Lil's, or Fuzz's. She figured that if even Fuzz's group knew, somehow Han would find out, then Jef would know, and in the process word would spread to both Lil and Stix or someone.

Rona was so paranoid, she didn't even want Glow to know.

There were great advantages to this. Being in a way-way-way-under-the-radar group meant that one practically didn't exist anymore. Sure, cats would remember one, but they thought one was dead or something like that.

So Rona had been observing a new litter of kits in Lil's group. She knew that one was named Fluffles, and that she was deaf. She also had a suspicion that the father was not Sparks.

But anyway, Rona needed more cats to join her group. She was on the way to persuading Whiskers, a free range house cat whose problems lay with a new puppy. But she thought that this kit, in connection with her brother, would be an extremely valuable addition to her group.

She only hoped it would be easy.

Rona stood up and stretched quietly. She padded away from the vent silently and made her way out of the house, leaping from the gutter to the next building, where she slid through a window and entered a large room. From there, she padded to the next window and clawed her way down a tree, finally slipping through some latticework and squeezing into a boarded-up crawl-space. She crawled to an area with a ceiling high enough to accommodate a much taller cat.

Pisces looked up. "When will you get more cats? We can't survive, just the five of us!"

"I know." Rona remained level-headed, her amber eyes calm. "It won't take long."

"Well, if you're not carrying prey or bringing in another cat, get out!" snapped Pisces.

"I was just checking up," Rona stated laconically. She turned around. "I'll be back."

Rona crept to Whiskers' house, finding him out and waiting. "Well?"

Whiskers leapt down from the fence. "Yes. They're not putting the puppy in cages or on a pelt-string or anything. It's huge, and I can't find a spot where it's been unable to find me and bark at me."

Rona nodded curtly. "Follow me." She went back the way she came, Whiskers hurrying after her. She left the pale gray tomcat to meet Pisces and the kits while she went to hunt.

When Rona got back, carrying a bird and some salty sticks, she found Whiskers being bombarded by the kits and Pisces sleeping. She left the food-- "Don't eat anything," she mewed. "Yet."-- and curled up in her own den, safe from intruders.

She fell asleep, leaving the unwelcome scent by the entrance and the scrap of dark gray fur unnoticed.

(Picture is Lil)