She hears a quiet sad whine, then more of that ragged, pained breathing.

Oh no, the poor thing... 

She backs away a bit, pours fresh water on her arm (shallow cuts, thankfully) and then holds her other arm over the wounds until they stop bleeding. She makes quiet soothing noises with her mouth as she does (and winces when one of them comes out as more of a screech than she intended. Normally it's fine, but...)

Then, carefully, she uses a stick to push some of the fern aside and peer inward.

The wounded cat there is both too small to be fully grown and also bigger than any cat she's ever seen with her eyes before. 

He's also bleeding from a wound on its side, and another on one of its back legs. 

She's done first aid on farm animals, before. They didn't like her much more than the people did, but she was good at wrestling with them, which was one of the only ways to bandage a wounded sheep.

The cat is hurt, pretty badly, but it doesn't seem like he's lost too much blood. Looks... probably survivable? With her help, at anyways.

She (slowly, carefully) opens her waterskin, and then pours some water (from as high up as she can hold it) into his mouth. He flinches at first, but then starts to drink.

She makes soothing noises at the poor thing, then backs away slowly, and then empties the contents of her bag on the ground and hurries as fast as she can back to her tree. She needs him to trust her, and she also needs some cloth to cover the wound. 

(Climbing the tree with the claw wounds on her arm hurts horribly, but she barely notices. It's not what's important right now.) 

She returns to the creature's hidingbush about 20 minutes later, armed with a bit of spare clothing and the rest of her dried meats. She carefully offers him a piece.

(He's doing a bit worse, but still breathing.)

sniffsniffsniiiifffffffffffffffffffff CHOMP chewchewchewchewchewchew...

Okay, good, he can still eat. She sighs in relief. Now for the hard part.

She spends the next hour alternating between feeding and occasionally watering the poor cat, making her best attempt at soft soothing noises, and looking around to see if anything is coming. Each time she feeds him, she brings herself a little closer to his striking distance (slowly, carefully). 

He tenses up a few times, growling, but when she stops at the growls, he lets her continue.

After a while, she's getting her hand close enough to touch, and between snacks, he licks her, weakly.

That's as good a sign as any.  The wound on its leg isn't bleeding anymore, but the one on its side still is. And they both need to be washed. 

"Sorry. This is going to suck for both of us," she whispers to it softly.

She takes the waterskin out from the inside of her warm jacket (she'd placed it against her stomach to warm it up-  cold water hurts more and doesn't clean any better), and pours it over the wounds. She's not aiming for gentle (this will hurt no matter what), or for doing a perfect job washing it out (she definitely can't do that), but even a bad job washing a wound can be the difference between life and death.

!!!! grrrowl SNArrrRL kickkickkick!!!!

But he's still too weak to stand, and she has a much better understanding of his range, now, so all he can do is flail in pain, and then look at her in confusion and anger when she finishes.

"There, there." She wishes she could pet him. She wishes she had healing herbs instead of just water and a rapidly dwindling supply of dried meat. She wishes...

...she doesn't have the time to be wishing. She feeds him a bigger chunk of dried meats, and while he's eating it, she places a long stripe of linen over the bleeding wound. There's no way for her to actually apply pressure, he'll spook and hurt them both, but just having river-cleaned linen over the wound should make the bleeding stop.

(He flinches, when she puts it on, but he doesn't knock it off, and after he finishes glaring at her for this latest indignity, he goes back to eating.)

munchmunchmunch yawwwwnnn

She breathes another sigh of relief, and then stops to think about what to do next.

...she just gave away most of her stored meat to a wild animal she's only mostly sure she can save.

That was... not the smartest thing to have done, even if the tubers are plentiful.

But... the Forest has been kind to her, kinder than her village ever was. She wants to be good to it, in return. And she'll start with this poor cat.

She was planning on learning how to catch fish in the river anyways. Now she just needs to do it faster. And she remembers a trick for it...

Her wooden fishing spear isn't especially sharp, but it'll do the trick if she can connect. She practices with the blunt end, aiming at rocks, and learns to adjust her aim for the way the water seems to bend things. 

Then, she crushes the poisonous berries into a thick paste, and places them under a rock, upstream, just like the hunter bragged about doing.

To her relief, he was right - downstream of the poison, the fish start moving slower. Her aim still isn't great, but it's good enough; she manages to skewer four of them before her spear breaks.

She brings her winnings back to her(?) cat friend(??) patient - it's dangerous to leave him undefended, and he might be lonely.

(He perks up as she approaches)

Sniffsniffsniffffff 

(...and is clearly very interested in the fish)

Sure. Fishie for kitty. 

Kaitiaki busies herself gutting the other three, which is gross but not difficult once you know how (which is why she volunteered to do it for her family, last fall).

Then she gathers fallen wood and twigs, spends a little while fighting with the flint, and eventually gets a small fire going, which she uses to cook the fish, piece by piece. (She's not great at it, but overcooked fish isn't unhealthy, it just tastes worse.)