Start with Act 1 here. In my D&D campaign, I surprised my players with this knowledge by introducing a cat by the name of Shadowtail. This is Shadowtail’s origin story, Act 2.
I was inspired by several things: cats I’ve known in my life, for one; the stories about Lankhmar Below by Fritz Lieber; the novel Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams; and the Dream of A Thousand Cats from the Sandman series.
Act II:
She did not have a name. She had lived so long among the Two-Legs that she had nearly lost her meow, which surprised me. Whatever the Two-Legs called her did not sing to her, so she ignored them. She had spied me from a distance and it had reminded her of something, and eventually had approached me.
She was as free as the wind, and as patient as the stone, and as fierce as a fire. But what she was all else: she was clever. Nearly as clever as I am.
We spent most of our time aboveground. Riverwild would come find me and we would hunt together or sun together in the late afternoon. On rainy days we would hide in one of the buildings – avoiding the stone hall near the gate where the Two-Legs came and went, and the main temple where the fount of magic once was. We would hiss and taunt the giant spiders in the pavilion, or chase game down the stone steps into the deep hole, or chase each other along the broken wall tops.
Best of all we would watch the sun, moon and stars chase themselves across the sky from the top most level of the tallest tower, and we would sing to them, and to each other.
One day, we had wandered beyond the walls in search of tasty mice, and seeing her on the bank of a rushing stream, I said that she was as wild as a rushing river. She sneezed in laughter, and said, “You, and only you, may call me Riverwild. I may not come when you call, of course, but my heart will hear it, Shadowtail.”
Eventually, kittens happened, as they often do.
Riverwild and I would roam and hunt still. We were particularly careful about avoiding the gatehouse during these long warm days andshort warm nights. When Riverwild became too gravid to hunt, she would nest in the long grass near a pool of potable water, and I would bring her meat to feed her and her — our — kits. When they were done with nursing, Riverwild and I would give them prey to play with, and sometimes hide and pounce on them, until they learned to hide and pounce on us. We gave names to the one or two who could sing more than just cat-song.
It was a good summer. But the warm season does grow cooler. Leaves turn from green to brown and orange. Days grow shorter, leaving more night in which to hunt. Kittens became ptoms and qweins. They grew and some stayed nearby, and others wandered off on their own adventures. In the lazy afternoons, bellies full, I would sing them songs of Kopno’domas Below and the War of Cats, Dogs, and Rats (hissss!)