Hi hello I'm finally getting around to writing a pinned post after almost a decade!!
I go by Yarrow, my pronouns are whatever you assume them to be (I have commitment issues!!) and this is my animal xenofiction-adjacent blog...though it's mostly warrior cats at the moment lol. I'm just really into dramatic talking animals.
Sometimes I draw. More often i'm just rambling. behind the scenes I'm trying very hard to write long-form cat stories and maybe i'll even get around to posting them eventually.
PSA: i've never socialized in online spaces and am still so very rotten at communicating online, even with irl friends, even tho i swear I love getting asks and comments!! so if i don't reply to you it is very not personal and i probably rlly wanted to, but alas, my brain is bad. life long bad habit i fear, i am.....working on it... ;_;
please read more for blog info, tags, side blogs, etc!!
Expect occasional light gore and/or horror-adjacent stuff and potential discussion of disturbing topics if it is relevant to a book i'm reading. also i curse a lot. I do my best to tag #animal death and #body horror but I do forget sometimes, so keep that in mind before following. and it's ok to ask me to tag something
Tags:
#yarrow speaks = any personal post, usually wc rambling or critique
#yarrow draws = art tag
#wc comics = i used to do silly little (mostly parody) comics sometimes
#SunDrownCove = working title for my current warrior cat OC fic (that will hopefully be finished eventually)
#wc criticism = for the more critical/negative war cat posts (i'm not always good at remembering this tag)
Other Blog Resources: Here's my personal big list of possible warrior cat prefixes and suffixes for OC-making purposes. (note: the prefix list is out of date, i'm workin on it)
other blogs:
tea-leef - main personal blog
sootspiders - side blog for writing progress rambles and low-effort doodles (its extremely similar to this blog, but this is where i put things that i'm slightly more self conscious about "spamming" my blog with)
yarrowleef-babbles - Yet Another side blog for even more unrestrained ramblings about books i'm reading that don't fit the theme of this blog (I dont even remember why I made this one)
tallstars-rewrite - side blog for "for roads untraveled" that long af tallstar's revenge rewrite I wrote a couple years ago. here's the Ao3 mirror!
the wc nuzlocke - short lived side blog for an old abandoned project when I tried to make a weird warrior cat fic out of a pokemon nuzlocke (tagged as #the wc nuzlocke on this blog)
other socials (I am only really active on tumblr, otherwise I'm a lurker)
Bluesky
youtube
flight rising
deviantart (I have a couple free linearts/bases here)
someone who understands cat genetics a little better than me explain what the deal is with my sisters cat...so he's a flame point, just a random bred cat, idk exactly what his siblings looked like but I was told he was the only color point in his litter. so he is unlikely to be anything but a moggy.
and i was under the impression normal color point cats always always have blue eyes, no extra pigment. he wasn't full grown when we got him and he had light blue eyes, but as he got older they started turning yellow around the pupil? i dont have any younger photos of his eyes when they were all blue, but the difference was noticeable. this is him at less than a year old
and now he's 2 years old and the yellow-ish ring has become his full eye color....i dont even know what to describe this color. i guess they still read as light blue? but having seen them when they were actually Blue, the yellow tint makes them look almost like. silvery gray?
so is it actually possible for color point cats to have a little color pigment in their eyes?? is this a normal variant of light blue that i just haven't seen in other points or is he weird
also how would y'all describe this color in prose or in a wc allegiance list, bc i coincidentally have an oc with eyes i wanted to make this color but "warm blue" does not make sense and idk if they are quite yellow enough to say "pale yellow" but. somehow they also dont look green to me at all.
listened through chasing shadows yesterday, so, i think we have confirmation now that morningkit IS physically "growing" (in appearance at least) along with Moonpaw??
cause starlingpaw saw both of them walking around and thought "hey two intruders" where if morningkit was kitten sized that surely would have caught his attention.
this is kind of interesting, but no character has commented on or asked about how old she looks so. idk if it will ever be addressed.....?
squirrelflight's hope is a very bad book but "she deserved to be loved." "she was loved. i loved her." is genuinely one of the greatest most emotionally raw lines in all of the books ever. there is so much in there. she was loved. i loved her. i can't explain to you guys what happens to me when i think about she was loved i loved her
I've wanted to make a series of aging Misty designs for a while now, I liked the idea of her growing "mistier" and faded as she aged, becoming entirely unrecognisable.
I like the general direction I took with these, but you can tell the youngest headshot was drawn a while ago with the style change, lol and I'm pretty rusty atm.
…which means it’s time for an annual reminder not to kidnap baby birds. Fact: most species of birds have almost no sense of smell. Someone probably told you that if you touch a baby bird, the mother will smell you on it and reject her baby. THAT IS NOT THE CASE. If you’ve found a baby bird and you touched it, all is not lost, you can still return it to mom and dad!
Pictured: a young Mourning Dove, after being rescued from the tender mercies of my dog, circa spring 2005. It’s a fledgling! Note how it has most of its feathers, but still looks a bit awkward and scruffy, and, being unable to properly fly, can be caught by an elderly husky or a child.
Help, I found a baby bird on the ground, what do I do???
Hatchlings/Nestlings: IF it is naked or covered in fluffy down and/or pinfeathers and cannot flutter successfully, it’s a hatchling or nestling, and has fallen from its nest prematurely. Look for the nest- if you find it and can reach it, return baby and then leave and let the parents return. If you can’t find the nest, or if you find it in pieces on the ground, use a small box/yogurt container lined with dried grass and attach as close as possible to where you found the bird or where you think the nest was. If it’s cold, warm it in your hands for a few minutes before putting it back. RETURN BABY!!!!
Fledglings: If you spot a young bird covered with feathers (may have a few patches of fluff) on the ground, it’s a fledgling (bird tween) who is currently working on flying 101 homework, which is normal and fine. Hanging out on the ground is part of the learning to fly process! If it looks like it’s in immediate danger (i.e. of being run over, stepped on, or eaten by a cat or dog), the best thing you can do for it is to gently scoop it up and place it in the low branches of a nearby tree or shrub, and then LEAVE. The parents are likely nearby watching, and will return once the coast is clear. If it flutter-hops away from you and you can’t catch it, then don’t worry! It just successfully avoided a predator (you), and therefore can probably continue to do so. LEAVE BABY ALONE!!!
DO NOT: Try to feed it, bring it into your house or car, or take it to your local domestic animal vet or shelter.
IF it IS actually for-real injured (bleeding, broken limb, attacked by cat, struck window), you can catch it, put it in a dark cardboard box (with NO food or water, young birds can aspirate easily) and contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation professional, but keep in mind that they get a LOT of fledgling birds, and those birds have a pretty high mortality rate. They may tell you that there is nothing you or they can do but allow nature to take its course, and that’s hard, but important to hear and respect.
it’s that time again! all the birding subreddits are filled with people who kidnapped baby birds and I want to believe you can be better than that, tumblr.
i'm surprised the fandom doesn't talk more about the fact that crowfeather is, indirectly but still significantly imo, responsible for causing leafpool's horrible death. and he just never aknowledges it
granted i haven't been super active lately so maybe people do talk about it sometimes, but i think we could always stand to talk about it more. cause like. there's a lot of awful things in squirrelflights hope but ????? girl ????
and light in the mist had the nerve to imply they are going to get back together some day in cat heaven???? free me. 😭
His name is Paradox and he's a black-red-blue tortie tabby with white, and he's apparently mostly shorthaired with long hair along his sides & behind front legs! Chimerism is my guess here :)
I love that you really can see the difference even between the black tabby and the blue tabby parts. What a nice example.
Not to have warrior cats thoughts on main again but I wonder if it's considered gauche to name your kit in such a way that it's really clear you're gunning for a specific warrior name.
Like if Appleflower over in the nursery gives birth to a tortoiseshell with one white paw and names her Whitekit, does her leader give her a strong side-eye and think I see what you did there, I know you're trying to railroad me into fucking Whitefoot or Whitestep, and I swear to StarClan if I'm still leader by the time that thing has a ceremony, she's Whitecloud. I'll do it just to be a dick to you specifically, you can't fucking tell me what to do
