For the Crusade plan to work would it require something like the Cat boss (Tiger? The one Hazo & dogs passed through) sign off on and somehow enforce the peaceful passage of crusaders through their territory? The more social and organized territories like Bear can probably do this, but the feline one seems unlikely.
Going by the sketch of the 7th Path that I've made (link in my sig), Cat is the most direct and established path between Dog and Arachnid, but it shouldn't be the only one. If you exit through the southwest end of Bear or the west end of Hornet (not sure which) you should cross into the territory directly south of Cat, which hopefully would be more friendly.
Though, we should probably ensure that. We can ask Kumokogo what Clan exists east of Arachnid and what relations with them are like. If we
really need to we can probably route through Kangaroo and Squirrel even further south, routing from the south end of Hornet.
If we assume every Clan involved from the east can at least reach Pangolin (which is essentially true, given how Pangolin borders nearly everything in the east), we should also look into Hyena, Leopard, and Rat. Hyena gives us access to Dog, Leopard gives more direct access to Hornet, and Rat gives access to the unknown clan south of Leopard who presumably borders Hornet and
maybe also Squirrel.
In short, Hornet is the focal point of the journey and we need both a way to get to Hornet from the east and a way to get from Hornet to Arachnid. Kumokogo's already brought a bunch of Hornets to help out, so we can likely count on there being a safe path between Hornet and Arachnid, but we also need to establish a safe path from the eastern clans to Hornet, which we can accomplish through Hyena, Leopard, or Rat and their unknown western neighbour.
