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| Dave Choat |
The Ancaster or Kessel hillcat is a secretive animal, seldom glimpsed in the forests and fields of Southern Landsrue. Camouflaged by their mottled brown, black and white coats, few of these rare wild felines have been seen, much less captured, by man.
Hillcats are sturdily built. Males can reach 35 pounds, while the more compact females rarely go above 25. Their long, water-resistant fur does not mat or tangle, and is more than adequate protection against the winter's chill. They are fearless hunters, killing prey their own size or sometimes slightly larger.
Like all cats, hillcats are excellent climbers and jumpers. Unlike their domesticated cousins, they are also good diggers. They take refuge in burrows during the coldest days of winter, wrapping their bushy tails around their sensitive noses. Females give birth underground as well; average litter size is 4-6 kittens.
Hillcats are not known to be magical animals, and they have no language of their own. However, they do communicate after a fashion with brownies. Male hillcats are fiercely independent, but pregnant females will sometimes agree to serve the "little people" as mounts in exchange for protection and help. In such situations, the female will dig a chamber adjoining a brownie's burrow, giving birth to and raising her kittens there. These arrangements are always temporary, lasting only until the kittens are able to survive on their own. Occasionally, a non-pregnant female may agree to serve a brownie if his need is great.
A brownie always knows the name of her hillcat mount, even if she can only pronounce it properly in her head. Hillcats never hunt brownies, and brownies have been known to tend injured hillcats, though the males never thank them for it.
If taken very young, hillcats can be domesticated, and such specimens command a high price on the market. In the early 900's, Lord Franklin was famous throughout the countryside for his pack of five hunting hillcats. He adopted the newly-orphaned kittens after the mother was torn apart by his dogs, two of whom did not survive the encounter. After raising them with some difficulty, he used them to hunt birds and rabbits. On one particularly memorable occasion they brought down a deer. Because of his success in training them, it is widely speculated that he must have had some help from local brownies. Lord Franklin denied this to his dying day.