I blacked out for tallstar's collapse because I saw "slow worm" and lost my mind, a cat named after one of my favourite lizards! I did reread it afterwards (your plot ideas are SO on point) but yeah thank you for the slow worm mention.
I <3 slowworms and think they are super super cool. The UK has like 6-ish native reptiles and they're all really neat, because it's SO COLD they have to have a bunch of unique adaptations
Adders are still my favorite because they look grumpy and that's delightful, but slowworms are probably a close second. Legless lizards are wild.
I keep trying to settle on a good English prefix to translate Clanmew's word for slowworms into, but hit the issue of every alternative name being... Lovecraft's cat for ableism.
I think I heard a fine French word for it, which I might jot down.