History

Tayrashade had a very non-traditional upbringing. The small kit was adopted by an elderly professor of biology who owned two pet ferrets, Wallace and Darwin. The professor obviously was very passionate about science since he named his ferrets after the figureheads of evolutionary biology. Upon receiving Tayrashade the professor named him Carson, after the famous marine biologist Rachel Carson, but Tayra never really cared what he was called. Wallace and Darwin called him Stoat for the first few moons that he was living there, because they said he looked like a little stoat and was kind of like their child.

Carson's life was simple in the professor's home, mainly consisting of listening to the ferrets bicker and lounging around. Wallace and Darwin liked to tell Carson all about different animals that the professor had watched documentaries about. He even put on documentaries about Mustelids, weasels and relatives, for the three to watch while he was away. From this and the ferret pairs' stories Carson learned about the Tayra, a huge mustelid that hunted in the trees. It was agile, mysterious, and fierce. Carson was immediately enamored and to his delight Wallace and Darwin decided it was a much better fitting name than Carson or Stoat. From that day on he was now Tayra. This got to the tom's head and created quite the ego, which he used to exact his dominance over his ferret parents. He learned everything from them, play and hunting strategy, behavioral cues, body language, which made him unlike most cats.

The trio's idyllic life was abruptly uprooted by the death of the professor, who had tripped in the home and shattered his hip. Upon his death Wallace and Darwin were rehomed, torn from Tayra permanently. Not used to any Twolegs besides the professor Tayra lashed out at the would-be rescuers. His grief clouded his thoughts and Tayra fled out the front door, determined to get away from all the memories, all the pain. His time alone and on the streets was not long, possibly a moon or two, before he ran into a pair of daylight warriors. They told him of the forest dwelling cats that accept strangers and that all he had to do was follow the gorge down to Whitestar's den.

Sick of the cold and unforgiving streets of the Twoleg dwellings Tayra fled to Skyclan in hopes of a reprieve from his grief, anything to distract him. That was all he viewed it as at first, a distraction from the pain, a blip in the timeline of his life. Moons passed and Tayra found himself to like living amongst the forest cats, despite their cultural and behavioral differences. He even took on a suffix as a symbol of his committment to Skyclan. Now Tayrashade, the tom lives a quiet life and enjoys the benefits of living in a community.