Cato the Snow Leopard

Name: Cato
Nickname: none
Age: Around 3 years
Species: Snow Leopard
Appearance: Like most snow leopards, Cato has gray fur with black spots. His ears form a rounded triangle shape, with a black tip. His belly is pure white, and there is a tuft of fur in the shape of a triangle on his chest. His legs are the same gray with black fur pattern until the fingers of his paws, which are white. His tail has a white tip. His eyes are a bright green, and Kuma painted blue next to his left eye, to mark him as unique. The picture below is Cato as a cub.

Spoiler:

Personality: Cato likes to have fun. What sets him apart from other snow leopards is his playfulness. While other leopards of his pack would work and hunt, he preferred to sneak away and explore. As he got older and was required to do more duties, however, he started to become accustomed to another aspect: loyalty. Though his loyalty was not to his pack, but to his master and friend, Kuma Kurebayashi.
Background: It's the middle of the night as Cato, a snow leopard cub, sneaks out of the cave where the pack was staying through a blizzard. Rebellion led him to do what he did. He slipped out of the cave without anybody noticing. Finally free, he ran out into the frozen tundra of the Northern water tribe.

Meanwhile, Kuma Kurebayashi, fifteen at the time, was training in the light of the full moon. Though he wasn't using the full moon to bloodbend. Not only had he found that he lacked the skill, he also was repulsed by the idea of using people like puppets by controlling their blood. Instead, he trained with ice. Throwing water back and forth and freezing it in midair, creating beautiful ice crystals that rained down into the snow around him. Then he would melt the ice and start again, creating many different things. An idea occurred to him, and he pulled something out of his bag: the hilt of a sword, with no blade. Carefully, he bent the water to the hilt and froze it. It wasn't perfect, the edges were jagged. But the ice was as hard as any steel.

As Kuma was experimenting with his new creation, Cato slipped into the moonlight. Though hard to see due to his mostly white fur, the full moon illuminated him just enough for Kuma to notice movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see Cato sitting on a small snow bank, staring at him. Kuma held his sword out in front of him to warn the leopard to stay back, but Cato paid no attention to it. Instead, he ran up to Kuma and jumped up, knocking the sword out of his hand. Due to Kuma's lack of sword fighting experience, the sword fell freely from his hand. As soon as he was disarmed, he stepped back, but to his surprise, Cato walked closer to him and started pawing at a chain on Kuma's pants.

Realizing that the cub was harmless, Kuma knelt down and began to pet Cato. "Hey there, little guy, where is your family?" Seeming to understand him, Cato stepped back, a look that seemed a little like guilt on his face. "Did...did you run away?" Kuma asked. The cub gave a slight nod. Then it looked up at him, it's bright green eyes glowing in the dark. Kuma smiled. "I'll take care of you. We can have fun together!" he said. The cub seemed happy at the word "fun". Kuma stood, then something fell out of his backpack: a small tub of blue dye. He had been using it earlier to mark targets to shoot ice at. He knelt again and dabbed a cloth in the dye, then marked Cato's face. "There. Now i know you are my friend," he said as he put the dye back in his pack.

Since then, the two stayed together almost everywhere, even when Kuma fled the northern water tribe. Cato was not just Kuma's pet, he was his friend, and they stayed together through thick and thin.

Done!!

Approved