Firepaw quickly becomes best friends with the apprentices Graypaw and Ravenpaw, and falls in love with the Clan's medicine cat (a Clan healer with spiritual abilities, forbidden to have a mate or kits) Spottedleaf. He continues his apprenticeship and learns to hunt, fight, survive in the wild and about Clan traditions. He finds another great friend, Yellowfang, an old, grumpy but very profound medicine cat who was exiled from ShadowClan and later accepted into ThunderClan and taken care of by Firepaw.