Thanks to SwayingForest for suggesting this cat!

I think of Alderheart as a sweet, caring cat. He seems to have a strong bond with StarClan, and is a pretty good medicine cat.

In fact, I don't think he gets the love he deserves. He's a pretty good character.

He isn't overly confident, and can question himself. As a kit he wishes for Sparkkit's confidence, and shakes during his apprenticeship ceremony.

Something that may have put me off him slightly was the fact that he became a warrior apprentice and then a medicine cat apprentice; we'd already had Spottedleaf, Yellowfang, Cinderpelt and Jayfeather who had all previously been training to become a warrior. However, I've just listed three of my favourite characters so maybe I should be quiet.

Though there have been multiple medicine cats that were once warriors or warriors in training, they each have a unique reason for doing so; Spottedleaf became a medicine cat because the creepy older tom who said he loved her was actually training in the Dark Forest and was evil (and was good at being a medicine cat), Yellowfang felt the pain of others around her so couldn't fight in battles or she'd just be attacking herself, Cinderpelt got hit by a monster and couldn't be a warrior (and she was good at being a medicine cat) and Jayfeather finally realised that becoming a blind warrior isn't really a smart thing to do (and he was good at being a medicine cat).

I feel like most of the new main characters have been made to be more relatable, actually. Last chapter I discussed Twigbranch, and if you catch me talking about Violetshine or Rootpaw, you'll see that I think the same applies to them in their own way.

Alderheart is my favourite tom introduced in the later books (Clear Sky is my favourite in the Dawn of the Clans, Crookedstar is my favourite in the BlueYellowTallCrooked timeline, Brackenfur and Graystripe were my favourites in the first series, whenever Berrynose was introduced he became my favourite then).

Also cats that worry are super cute. Nobody worries enough, for a Clan of wild cats who live in a forest constantly surrounded by threats. I don't want them to constantly fear everything around them, but maybe consider that StarClan is mad at you for a reason? That the dogs or foxes or badgers probably won't wait for you to sun yourselves?

So to sum him up... Well, he's relatable in that he's not perfect but reasonably flawed, he's pretty unique and he's super adorable in many ways. Warriors needs more "normal", "down to earth", "good" cats. And cats who worry.