Rusty was a flame-ginger house cat, and one day he would be called Firestar. Every night he sat on his garden fence and looked at the dark trees. "Just to the fence," said his friend Smudge. "Never past it."
One night a smell drifted out of the trees. Mouse! Rusty's whiskers twitched. "Just to the fence," he told himself. Then he jumped down on the other side.
The forest crackled and rustled all around him. Something grey burst out of the ferns and knocked Rusty flat. It was a young cat with a dark stripe down his back. "I'm Graypaw of ThunderClan," he said. "What do you eat over there?"
Rusty told him about the crunchy pellets in his bowl. Graypaw's eyes went wide. "Bring me some," he said, "and I'll show you how we hunt." So Rusty ran home, just to the fence and back, with three pellets in his mouth.
Graypaw crunched one pellet. He wrinkled his nose and spat it into the leaves. "Yuck! It tastes like a pebble!" Rusty laughed so hard he rolled off the log.
Then Graypaw crouched low in the grass. "Hunting is easy. Just jump!" Rusty made the biggest jump of his life. The mouse was gone before his paws came down.
So Rusty tried something else. He kept still, so still that a mouse crept out to sniff the spat-out pellet. Then he took one small step, and pounced, and caught his very first mouse.
Two big cats stepped out of the shadows. One was blue-grey with a silver muzzle. "I am Bluestar, leader of ThunderClan," she said. Beside her stood Lionheart, huge and golden. "You hunt well for a house cat," he said.
"Come to our camp at sunrise," said Bluestar. "Learn our ways, and your name will be Firepaw." Graypaw bounced on the spot. Rusty looked back at his house, and walked home slowly through the moonlight.
At sunrise, Smudge found him on the fence. "Where are you going?" "Just to the fence," said Rusty. Then he jumped down on the forest side, where Graypaw was waiting.
