Europe and the Middle East: The U.S. isn't the only part of the world to go through major changes in the latter half of the twenty first century. After decades of declining birth rates in Europe and immigration from the middle east the majority of the population of that continent is Islamic. Sadly the sentiment in that population has turned quite radical in the decade leading up to the time of The Face in the Mirror. An Islamic Caliphate unifying Europe and the middle east was founded eight years prior, with a stated goal of world conquest. They began by assaulting American and Canadian Shipping in the Atlantic. This touched off a war between The North American powers and the Caliphate. It was the first full scale war in which felis were deployed as soldiers.
One felis, an eleven year old mother of two named Shade, was deployed in what is now Syria. Shot by a sniper one month after Todd Hershel's accident her body kept going despite being brain dead. Her body served as the host for Todd's transplanted brain.