Catlings:

Appearance:

• Fur - short, sleek fur (summer); thick, wavey, shaggy fur (winter). Colors are all natural colors cats have (blue-black and orange being very rare) with very faint stripes as markings.
• Eyes - eyes and vision like a cats'. Can see color.
• Head - small housecat ears. Cat-ish bone structure. No chin or lips. Sharp teeth.
• Body - lean bodies. Five feet tall when standing, knees always slightly bent.
• Limbs - built to run very quickly, large feet for walking on snow. Claws are fairly dull and non-retractable. Blunt fingers on front limbs w/opposable thumb.
• Tails - tails are long and thin. Used for balance when running. Not capable of holding objects.
• Clothing - prefer loose to no clothing. Belts with many pouches and loops are typical and highly decorated with beads and feathers.

Stats/Skills/Etc.:

• Strength - minimal. Not capable of carrying great weight or powerful blows.
• Stamina - can go for days without food and very little to no water.
• Agility - above average. Fight on two legs and four. Usually run on four.
• Speed - yes. Very.
• Climate - Thick winter coats protect from the cold and large, efficient lungs make living at high altitudes possible.
• Weapons - special gloves with metal claws and tough palms are their usual weapons. That and scythe-like weapons. They bite too.
• Children - live birth, grow to adulthood in six years.

Arts:

• Ornate beading. Tend to prefer using a large variety of sizes and shapes in the same piece as well as color.
• Expert carvers of natural and abstract themes.
• Muiscally play drums and rattles that are always for dancing too.
• Never ask a Catling to sing.

Religion/Philosophy:

• Family is everything. All ambition is for the family.
• Catlings have no religion.

Social Structure:

• Identified - by the number and material (shell, jade, gold, silver, copper) of earrings you wear in your ears. Also may be echoed on your belt buckle.
• Family Death - if a family is utterly destroyed, its rank is left empty for ever.
• New Family - must be approved by the council. It is then of the lowest rank possible.
• Rank Change -
  • decided by the council.
  • coucil was formed of one member from each family (both parents from family before kitten's birth) taken at birth and raised by the council members.
  • council members could never know what family they came from.
  • council is now formed by whatever elves are assigned to it.
  • rank is raised or lowered depending on how well the family benefits the elves.

• Identified - by the pattern (and color) dyed into your tail fur.
• Formal Identification - by the ornaments hanging from your earrings.
• Relations -
  • anyone not in your family is a rival to your family.
  • can co-operate with other families but will use anything they find for the furtheration of their family.
  • very social, loyal, and co-operative with family members.
• Switching Families - can leave a family and become outcast or join another family with no loyalty ties to the old family remaining. Supposedly. ;)
• Betrayal - anyone who betrays their family is de-furred forever (medical procedure), stripped of their earrings (even belt buckle), and never existed.
• Family head - the head of the family is agreed on by its memebers. Can be any age, sex, etc. Your basic popularity contest. The elves surprisingly enough don't bother to control this.

Mating & Marriage:

• Marriage -
  • the one with the higher rank joins the lower family.
  • marriage is for love. It is rare and can only be done once.
  • same sex may marry each other.
  • used to be witnessed by a council member, now witnessed by the head of the higher ranked family involved since the elves cannot be bothered.
• Mating Contracts -
  • can be made between any rank.
  • made for up to five years and cannot be renewed until five years after it is over. (can decide to marry)
  • females may be in any number of them, males may only take out one at a time.
  • can be called off if both parties agree.
  • witnessed by the head of the female's rank.
• Pregnancy -
  • females breed at any time.
  • pregnancy lasts 3 months.
  • 1-3 kittens.
• Children - belong to whatever family the mother is in at the time of birth (after six years they can leave the family).
• Bastards - do not belong to any family.
• Adultry - no one really cares. Marriage and mating contracts are about who cares for the kittens, not who the father is.

Government:

Ruled by the elves. Catlings are slaves although they do not call themselves such.

Pre-elven Government:

• Laws - the council passed and enforced them with the warriors of the 10 highest-ranked families.
• Other - Roads, schools, and such are kept up by the families that lived in the area.
• Taxes - No taxes for Catlings, but alien importers and traders had to pay taxes that were used for relief efforts during natural disasters.

History:

• No history of war between Catlings.
• Catlings were space-capable before the elves conquered them, though apparently uninterested in travel.
• The elves conquered them by killing all of the council members and taking over in their place.
• The Catlings show no sign of rebelling against the elves.
• Before the elves, two families of Catlings had been killed by sickness. Since then, the elves have destroyed five families completely. A few more are hanging on the brink.
• Little else is known. The elves see no point in preserving their slaves' history. No one even knows what the Catlings used to call themselves or their language.

Species Interaction:

• Any enemy of the elves is an enemy of the Catlings.
• Any ally of the elves is a rival of the Catlings and is treated exactly the way they'd treat someone outside of their family.
• The elves are treated the way they treated their council members way back when: with complete, unquestioning obedience.