🖤🐾 Welcome to the world of Dark Paw.

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In the heart of Missouri sits the small historic town of Fulton, and at the center of Fulton is a place locals know as the Brick District.

The Brick District’s streets are lined with historic storefronts, masterful architectural details, tall windows, carved staircases, and buildings that have watched generations come and go. Most of the buildings here were built near the end of the 1800s, when structures were made slowly, by hand, brick by brick, with purpose and intention. By all accounts, many are works of art.

One such building is the Powell Building, completed in 1891.

And there is something you simply must know about historic buildings: when a building is created with care, purpose, and love, something special happens when the final piece is put into place.

The building gains a spirit.

When the last brick of the Powell Building was set in 1891, the building was graced with a loving, protective spirit named Nova.

For more than a century, Nova watched over the Powell Building.

He watched families occupy other buildings in the district, and Nova longed for a family of his own to care for. He watched buildings beam proudly on a business’s opening day and grow dark when that business closed.

He watched as horses gave way to automobiles and listened as each generation talked about how the world was changing. Some embraced those changes. Others feared them.

Over the years, Nova learned something rather important:

Both were usually right about half the time.

And somewhere along the way, Nova stopped caring only about his own building.

He came to care for the buildings beside it.

Then he began taking notice of the people and creatures who lived, worked, wandered, and visited throughout the Brick District.

A century of watching made Nova very wise, enormously loving, and powerfully protective.

But even the wisest guardian eventually needs someone to carry the work forward.

That someone arrived with whiskers.

Her name was Luci.

Luci was a young female cat who moved into the Powell Building with her family. She was energetic, curious, stubborn, affectionate, and absolutely incapable of leaving anything unexplored.

Windows had to be watched.

Noises had to be investigated.

Visitors had to be inspected.

And every corner of the old building had to be thoroughly understood.

Nova noticed.

He saw something in Luci that Luci herself did not yet understand.

A guardian needs curiosity.

A guardian needs courage.

But most of all, a guardian must love the place she protects.

Luci did.

So Nova offered to teach her how to care for the Brick District and protect the people and creatures who lived there, worked there, and came to visit.

And Luci accepted.

That is how a curious little gray tabby living in a historic building in Fulton, Missouri, began learning to watch over an entire historic district—and became the very first member of the Night Guard.

And eventually, when the streetlights came on and the shadows stretched across the bricks, Fulton would come to know her by another name…

Dark Paw.

🖤🐾 And this is where her story begins.