Adventures in Azeroth: Introducing Cat

Last time we talked about my adventures as a newbie hunter running around Zangarmarsh with my pals in WoW Insider's It came from the Blog guild, I was a newly minted level ten trying to figure out what pet to tame. And knowing little of what I was doing, I asked for your advice on what I ought to tame. From the image above and the title of the post, I'm pretty sure you can guess what the results are, but I'll break it down for you anyway. Out of a total of 762 votes, cat won out with a total of 198 votes. However, boar was very close behind with 190 votes. And in third place, the noble owl, with 82 votes. (If you want to see the full results, check here.)

So, as you can see, I went out and tamed a cat in Eversong Woods -- and I have to say, it's a completely different game after getting a pet! With a pet doing the tanking, I didn't have problems with monsters rushing up into melee range, where I can't use my bow, and beating on me. (Really, I'm hopeless once something gets into melee range!) And if something does get into melee range? I can just call my faithful cat in to pull it away. Oh yes, it seemed like the game was going to be eeaassssy sailing from here out. But of course nothing's ever easy...

It was easy right up until the point that my cat (at the time aptly named "Cat") vanished. Where did it go? When I tried to summon it, I was told I had no pet, and I was quite confused. Was it a bug of some sort? Fortunately, we have some experienced hunters in the guild, who were able to explain it to me -- you need to feed your pets to keep them happy. Ooooh. That could do it.

So Cat #1 ran away from me. I went back to tame a second one, promising to remember to feed it this time. I'm happy to report that Cat #2 has reached loyalty level 6 and level 17 -- so I think I learned my lesson the first time. (After all, what's a hunter without a pet? I found out how useless the class could be while leveling petless up to 10, and certainly don't want to do that again!) In fact, I liked Cat #2 so much that I even gave it a name -- after many suggestions on the guild line, I decided on "Mittens." (The cat has bright white mitten-paws compared to the rest of its red fur, after all.)

Now the question of the future is -- what about these training points? At low levels there doesn't seem to be a lot to do with them, so I've generically given Mittens some extra stamina and armor -- and of course the available rank of Claw and Growl. I seem to have a ton of training points available and nothing to use them on, though! So what's next for Mittens? Petopia suggests that I could train him with Claw 3 and Cower 2 (certainly no good for soloing, but it might be useful in instances from time to time) -- but the other interesting cat skills, Dash and Prowl, are nowhere to be found until the 30s. Next time you see me online, you'll know where to find me -- out hunting for Claw 3!

For the next installment of Adventures in Azeroth, you'll get to hear all about Lizzie's first trip through an instance as a Hunter. Trust me, it was an educational experience!