Into the Wild

Into the Wild is a fantasy novel about the lives of fictional cats, written by a team of authors under the pseudonym Erin Hunter. It was published by HarperCollins in Canada and the United States in January 2003 and in the United Kingdom in February 2003. It is the first novel in the Warriors series and has been published in paperback and e-book formats in twenty different languages.

The protagonist is a house cat named Rusty who abandons his human household for a group of wild cats living in clans in the forest. He is accepted into ThunderClan and given the name Firepaw, learns to hunt and to read the scents of enemies, and is then caught up in events inside the clan, including a murder and a betrayal. The book is narrated from his point of view throughout.

The clan structure is the organising device of the series: territory is limited, food is scarce, and the cats answer to a leader whose authority is not guaranteed to survive a bad season. A prophecy given to the leader, Bluestar, states that fire alone will save the clan, and Firepaw's presence is the book's way of testing it. The novel ends with him receiving his warrior name, Fireheart, after a battle with a rival clan.