Kit - Young Adult Subordinate Male

Description:
Facial Features: Kit has a elegant pointed muzzle, splotch shaped irregularly defined dark grey brown eye patches and small round ears that stick out slightly from the side of his head. He has no unusual marks or blemishes and his whiskers are uniformly average in length.
He has light blue/grey crystal bright eyes and his coat is a pale mocha/grey with a paler chin to underbelly.
Body Structure: Kit is on the lean side for a male meerkat of his age but is slightly shorter than average, having been a partially ignored pup he has grown up slimmer and he still lacks any prominent heavy facial muscle developments of an experienced adult. It is obvious when looking at Kit to identify by his height that he has only recently come of yearling age.
Body Features: Kit’s stripe pattern forms broken lines horizontally down his back and they are of a darker brown but still blend well with his grey/brown coat colour. All his claws and paws are present and average in length and his tail is of a proportionate length to his body for a young adult.
Scars: Kit has a pattern of scars on his left hip from an attempted infanticide by a dominant female whilst he was a very young pup.

Interesting Description facts:
*Kit’s healed injury to his back left leg tends to make the hip joint feel stiffer on cooler days and although he is lean and has learnt over the months to walk and run on the leg it does tend to ache after short periods of excessive exertion. He remembers the pain of the day he received the injury but has no memory behind the event or of the adult female who didn’t want him to live.

Personality:
Openness: - Before the disease and changes came to devastate the world that Kit knew, he might have continued to be open to new ideas and experiences if he was allowed more time to prepare for them. Death has swooped into his life and narrowed his outlook out of fear, and the swift reallocation of dominance could be a good thing if he could see the positivity through the oppressive fog of grief.
For now must cling to the traditional experience of the social hierarchy of meerkat society and continue to develop the skills he was being taught to hopefully keep himself out of trouble.
 
Conscientiousness: - If Kit put his mind to it he could be a well organised, reliable and helpful individual which might become a valuable aid to the new dominant male. It will take some convincing to put this yearling back on the right track and earning his place amongst the ranks.

Kit doesn’t really know where he stands when looking after new pups; he hasn’t seen many young litters emerge in his life time and has never been given sole responsibility to be their guardian babysitter. Sentry duty is more up his street as he has a chance to be alert and vigilant however his leg tends to go to sleep on him causing him to wobble.

Extraversion: - Even as a young pup Kit has an extroverted type of personality. He isn’t shy of approaching strangers or older individuals and enjoys the company of being in a family setting. Although he may initially be perceived as quiet, he does know that in order to survive competition he has to make himself heard. He is generally easy going and more often than not would want to be involved with jovial and fun activities just like any other individual his age.

Agreeableness: - Beneath the surface Kit has good qualities which if these could be nurtured and encouraged to develop he could stand a chance of fulfilling his ambitions to be a dominant and supportive leader like his father one day. However kind and caring he tried to be to his siblings, he had to really fight hard to find his identity growing up with a large number of them and even though he was sympathetic to others they weren’t always the same back to him.

Today though due to the sudden loss of his family and the father figure he idolised, Kit has gained a cold crust to his once agreeable traits and can often come across quite changeable. He is touchy, restless and can become argumentative if not in the right mood to want to co-operate for the new strangers who have taken over to form the Puzzles.

Neuroticism: - Kit is somewhere in between the polar ends when it comes to his emotionally stability. He has found it extremely difficult to come to terms with the loss of his family and accept the change his group is going through but this could be down to that he has no other channels to focus his dedication on. He also is a yearling male where hormones might contribute to changes in his behaviour. He used to be accepting and submissive to his father’s dominance but now with his father gone and with himself too young to compete he isn’t too happy about accepting a stranger.
If these factors could be put aside Kit could flourish well into full adulthood, growing up he wasn’t usually one to worry about situations unless he really had to and he liked to think things through and was confident in his abilities to achieve a desired outcome. He was calm and collected pup who wanted to grow up strong to be a demined, courageous fighter who would do anything to protect his family.

A real problem Kit has though is with bonding with older females. It is an ingrained issue that is connected to the fact that he wasn’t close to the dominant female who should have been like a mother to him. Her cold feelings towards him left him disconnected and slightly envious of his littermates who were adored and as a result he usually was tended to be a subordinate female.

History:
Pre Birth
Before he was born, Kit’s true mother was a subordinate female in the largest groups of the research area that was lead by a highly successful dominant couple. It is unknown who his real father was as at the time of his likely conception the group experienced a spell of rover visits and a temporary switch of male dominance. As several pregnant female’s litters began to develop, tension within the group began to rise and by the time the dominant’s large litter of five were born most of the other female’s had aborted or paid a terrible price for birthing their pups at the main burrow alongside the dominant’s. Kit’s mother on the other hand had fled the group after receiving an early eviction warning and successfully gave birth to a small litter of three in a bolt hole on the outermost reaches of the main burrow complex.

Puphood
Several days after birth and still blind and oblivious to the world around him, Kit and his siblings were descended upon in a frantic burrow raid by the natal group’s dominant female. She had caught the scent of the pups on their mother as she had tried to return to her position in the group and with the mother permanently banished to the desert there was no room for resource competition from another’s newborns.

Pain was the first real feeling that tiny Kit ever remembered. The intense sensation in his back leg as he was shook in their air from side to side before being dropped to the ground was overwhelming. Even after he regained consciousness the new feeling in his body prevailed and there was now no warmth of an affectionate nuzzle to soothe his plight.

Contented that her pups were now back in a better position, the dominant female resumed her foraging duty surrounded by her large family, but it was the dominant male of the group who took it upon himself to investigate the bolt hole and discovered Kit’s injured and weak little body making desperate pleading squeaks trying to cling to life.
Torn and heartbroken to find Kit lying surrounded by his already dead littermates, the Dominant male carried Kit back to the burrow and left him in the company of the group babysitters before returning to his mate.

Even though fate had spared him from an early death, acceptance into the group and stunted development was the very bottom of the uphill struggle he would face for the majority of his young early life. By the time the dominance pup’s were able to emerge from the burrow, Kit’s wound to his back leg was slowly closing but learning to drag himself to find an adult underground in the burrow complex was a tremendous trial for one so small. He found he had to call out at the top of his voice to be heard and it was always a subordinate adult who would offer to feed him before resuming to her priority.

To the adults in the group Kit wasn’t a particularly popular pup to be seen fussing over or cuddling up with. By the time he was considerably mobile hobbling on three legs a majority of the time to build up his injured muscles; he was often found sitting near the group’s dominant male or trying to be the peacemaker with the other pups. Kit idolised the group’s dominant male, in his eyes and belief his father. The older male protected everyone everyday when they went out foraging and every evening Kit waited at the burrow mouth to see him bring everyone safely home again. Kit saw him as very noble, loyal dedicated leader and gained much respect for him.
He had little affection for the for the group’s matriarch, the dominant female was always very cold and uncaring towards offering any maternal love towards him but she never tried to evict him and let the group raise him despite his injury. To Kit though she never really felt like a mother to him but neither did any of the other females in the group.

As Kit’s leg and growth continued into late puphood, Kit developed a better relationship with the other pups. He found that he enjoyed their company, play fighting and chasing but their small insignificant competing with one another meant something considerably more to Kit. He had to put every bit of effort into begging the adults for food whilst out foraging and even pushing himself when he was tired to keep on an adult’s tail. With now four other mouths to share with, competition for food wasn’t like a silly game of showing off, it meant survival and it meant ensuring that he could continue to improve walking on his back leg.

Juvenile Months
There were several incidents during his juvenile months where Kit was left out in the open after foraging around behind an adult and one where curiosity had got the better of him and one of the male pups from the dominant’s litter and they luckily were whisked out of the path of a passing jackal. It was moments of adventure and excitement that really bonded him with the other pups and even though he secretly envied their bond they had with their mother deep down he loved that he had their company.

The largest male became like Kit’s double act by the time they were six and half months old, both were smart, adventurous and enjoyed trying to stand up on their back legs even though Kit generally wobbled over more often than not.
The smallest male was much shyer than his brother and found the combination of the two older males roughhousing and adventuring too much to consider putting the effort in to getting involved with.
The two females were like chalk and cheese to each other. The smaller was a tomboy, who enjoyed digging in large holes and getting covered with earth whilst searching for her own food nobody else’s, the larger only truly felt comfortable in the company of her mother and always insisted on trying to get away with begging calls. Kit found he liked the smaller female pup more than the larger one and would always encourage his sister to keep up her spirits until her dedicated hard work paid off.  

A tragedy occurred for the group when Kit was roughly eight months old; the sudden death of the group’s beloved matriarch due to a snake bite trying to protect her youngest litter caused a chaotic spiral to descend upon the family. Natal males found this an opportune time to leave the group to rove and the oldest females argued amongst themselves for the right to assume the position as the new family matriarch.
Kit could only watch the chaos unravelled around him and his father continued to try and hold the group together but his position also was hanging in the balance as a majority of the remaining females were his older daughters or newly settling in immigrants.

Recent Yearling Months
The few months that followed the passing of the dominant female the once strong family had suffered a second heavy blow with the onset of signs of disease and one night Kit lost the most important individual and the one he had looked up to his entire life. Kit was heartbroken, the dominant male in his eyes had survived and endured so much and now had succumbed to something unknown. Who was going to take his place now and lead the group as well as his father had?

Left with a small handful of female adults, Kit had little choice but to stick with them for survival and the desperation of keeping the once family spirit alive. He wasn’t prepared to give up hope, he would persevere and try to remain strong even though he was uncertain of how they were going to undertake getting back on their feet again. He hadn't estimated how much he would be gripped by grief of losing his father and his young pup friends and the changes of seeing the last few remaining females vie for dominance instantly shook him and reminded him of the signs that started their current situation.

(I will happily amend any of the history section, and will add more when the foundations of the Puzzle groups have been confirmed)

Relationships:
Birth Mother: Unnamed, Wild
Adopted Father: Unnamed, Wild Former Dominant
Presumed Littermate relatives:  3 males 2 females either Dispersed or Deceased
Birth Littermates: Deceased (Kit doesn’t remember them)

Image:

(Credit to Pancake again for her wonderful temple)

Ooooo, I like him. ^^

Such a tragic backstory, poor guy. D: You really know how to make an awesome backstory LM. ^^ I look forward to seeing him in action~

I hope it's not too over kill unrealistically tragic though, I've brought him out of WIP and will see what everyone else thinks. But i'm really glad you like him ^^ thank you for checking it over for me. Very appreciated.

I saw no issues with it but good idea, I like it so far. ^^ And anytime~

You, Pan and Taakah are like miracle writers, seriously. XD I envy you guys, hehe.

He's wonderful LM. ^^ Can't wait to see him in action!

Aww thank you Stormy, I'm glad you like him. He's ready for approval now.

Well, approved, 1/2! (:

Approved 2/2~

Can't wait to see him in action LM. ^^