When he said that Summerclan's Mentors had to be more responsible, that included himself. Despite being assigned an apprentice since the beginning of his leadership - for the sake for saying they weren't breaking the 'leaders and deputies must have trained an apprentice' clause of the warrior code - Ratstar really hadn't paid all that much attention to Turtlepaw. Aside from being new to Summerclan himself at the time, the reason Markedpelt and Lemonspeckle had picked the young tom out of the apprentice lineup was because Turtlepaw was by all accounts an adult already; early on the poor kid had been held back for medical reasons, and since then had gone through at least two mentors. Most of the clan just assumed Turtlepaw would be promoted to a warrior the next moon anyway...at least, until the Coalkit accident.

Ratstar knew that Turtlepaw had been dragged along on that little adventure mostly against his will; he actually felt pretty bad about holding him back again, but it wouldn't have been fair to not punish his own apprentice along with the rest. The whole ordeal had opened his eyes...or, well, eye, to his lack of understanding of apprentice training as a whole. He wasn't about to make that mistake again.

The rain had slowed to a mild drizzle as the brown tabby tom padded over to the younger black and grey-speckled cat. "Come on, kiddo. Let's go patrolin', okay?"