Who owns the food in the Center Kingdom?

Choices:
A. Squirrels of The Treetops Tribe
B. Rats
C. Nobody
D. not enough information
Nobody
When Patch finally found his way out of the seed-pod, Toro was gone, and there were rats all around him. Some hid beneath the huge black seed-pods, some scuttled in the shadows of the nearby mountain. Patch knew from their smells there were at least a dozen of them.
There was another smell too, mixed with that of the rats. The very same unsavory squirrel-smell he had detected in Silver's abandoned drey.
"What do you want?" Patch asked, from his perch atop the mound of seed-pods. He was concerned but not yet frightened. Rats and squirrels were neither friends nor enemies. Squirrels were bigger and stronger, but rats were far more numerous. There were legends of long-ago wars between the two species, but no squirrel Patch knew had ever been attacked by rats. Squirrels lived aboveground, in the sun; rats frequented the night and the dark underworld. Of course, squirrels found rats disgusting and disagreeable -- but so did all other animals.
An unusually large rat climbed up to the top of a seed-pod. It was almost as big as Patch himself. Rats usually avoided light, but this one stood unafraid beneath the sun, and demanded: "Who are you?"
"I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. "Who are you that asks?"
"I am Snout," the rat replied. "Why are you here?"
"I came to look for food."
"This is our food. These mountains are ours."
"Your food?" Patch asked, bewildered. There was no ownership of food in the Center Kingdom, not until it had actually been eaten. "That's ridiculous. It's food. It belongs to whoever finds it first."
"Then you belong to us," Snout hissed. "Because we are the rats who will suck the marrow from your broken bones."