Your child has been living in the forest with the Clans for months and has now run out of cats, or has simply looked up and asked what else there is. Here's what else. Six animal sagas where the animals have their own laws, their own ranks, their own gods and their own wars — owls, dogs, lions, rabbits, mice with swords. Choose by your child's age and by which animal they'd follow anywhere, and hand it over.
What a Warriors reader is actually addicted to isn't cats. It's the system. A society of animals that runs itself — a code, ranks you climb, ceremonies, a religion, made-up words for ordinary things, and a story where breaking the code is the whole plot. Every book on this shelf gives them that, which is why any one of them lands. They just come in different animals and different sizes. Guardians of Ga'Hoole is owls, and it's a prison break rather than a clan war. Survivors is literally the same authors doing it again with dogs, so it's the softest landing on the shelf in every sense except content. Bravelands is Erin Hunter on the African plains and it is the fiercest thing here. Spirit Animals is the one with people in it, which makes it the lightest and the fastest. Redwall is the huge, feasting, sword-and-shield epic. And Watership Down is where the whole genre was born, in 1972, and it's still the best of them. Steer by your child: younger or wanting another binge toward the top, older and ready for a real book toward the bottom. The dying is not a warning here. It's the thing your child came for.