Stone Cats

Overview

Stone cats are the great cats of the heights. They live on the crags and storm shelves of the Stormcrown and the upper Ironspine, hunting crag goats and whistlers, and they are so seldom seen that most people of the holds never see one at all. When one is seen low down, on a gate stair or a high road, the holds say the passes will close within days.

Appearance

A stone cat is as long as a Human is tall from nose to rump, with a tail nearly as long again, thick as an arm and furred to the tip, which it wraps round its face when it sleeps. It is lean and long-legged behind, with huge furred paws that carry it on snow. The coat is thick and smoke-grey to pale cream, dappled with dark grey rosettes, so that on a scree slope or a snowfield it is nearly invisible. Its eyes are pale grey-green.

It moves along a ledge without a sound, and can leap across a gap many times its own length. It does not roar; it hisses, growls, and in the mating season gives a long, eerie wail that Headwater folk take for the mountains' ghosts.

Habitat and Range

Stone cats live high, above the holds, on the crags, storm shelves, and high basins of the Stormcrown and the highest ridges of the Ironspine. Each keeps a huge range, and they are very few. They come lower when hard weather drives their prey down.

Behaviour and Temperament

A stone cat hunts alone, stalking crag goats, whistlers, and hares and leaping on them from above. In hard winters it takes sheep and goats from the summer pastures and the high terrace farms. It shuns people and is rarely a danger to them, but a lone climber on a high ledge or a child on a high pasture has been taken.

Life Cycle

A female bears two or three kittens in a rock den in spring and keeps them with her for nearly two years. Stone cats may live fifteen years.

Uses and Dangers

Their pelts are rare and costly; a hold warden who wears one wears a story with it. Their cost is to the herds on the high pastures in hard winters.

Lore and Belief

The holds say a stone cat seen on a gate stair or a high road means the passes close within days, and a caravan master who hears of one hurries; the cats do come down ahead of hard weather, following the goats, so the saying is often right. Headwater folk call the cat's wail the mountain's voice. Some Kindred caravans on the Long Tread say the stone cats walk with the Giants, which is told and not known.

A stone cat that has learned to take climbers is hunted by the hold's wardens with spears and hounds, and its pelt hangs in the gate-hall; every hold child knows of the warden who fought one bare-handed on a ledge above a thousand-foot drop and came down with its pelt and without an ear.

Where It Appears

• The Ironspine
• Writers' Guide: Stone and the Deep