This is the outcome of our request for outdoor cats...

Warm weather prevailed at the onset of January - and my goaties could snack on autumn leaves.

Perhaps you've never heard of the Department, but I swear it exists. Only, it is apparently managed by the cats themselves — who arrange things their own way, using their cat logic. When we moved out to the country, I petitioned the Department with a mental request for some outdoor cat, who would somewhat keep under control the local mice, ground squirrel and rabbit population. I had hoped that a cat would find its way to us. The Department ostensibly decreed that we were sufficiently busy with moving, baby goats and children's University applications; cats were avoiding us. For some period of time, a beautiful neighboring three-color kitty kept visiting with us, but that must have been only an inspector doing her duty.

We passed this strict review only by the summer of 2023, when our Californian friend Ashley showed up, with Hugo the cat, rescued from wildfires in California's mountain stables. Hugo came to us with his barn colleague Guido. Throughout the summer, we would let them venture out through a basement window, but with winter's arrival we had to re-evaluate such path — and rebuild our house with a whole array of cat doors so that they would get from the basement to the main floor, through a laundry room into the garage, and from there onto a relatively protected porch, facing east so that the whole house would not get carried away by Wyoming winds.

Frozen rain.

Eventually it snowed.

The cats settled well in our household, but there was a bureaucratic misunderstanding with the Department — my request had clearly been for an OUTDOOR cat, so that it would LIQUIDATE rodents. Instead, we were issued couch potatoes who, when catching something, they bring INSIDE, ALIVE if possible. Before we had cats, I never needed to chase live mice, squirrels and rabbits around the house every week (except for the one rabbit that fell into the window well right after we'd moved in).

Thus I began to consider still needing some cat that would live near the goat shed, scare away sparrows and catch mice. Twice I spotted a black and white cat similar to Hugo. One night I went to close the goaties, and all chickens slept outside, which made me wonder. It sometimes happens that a chicken misses the moment their automatic coop door closes, but now all of them were out and that was weird. I grabbed the first available chicken and opened the coop to move her in — and that black and white cat rushed out of the coop. He apparently fell asleep there and the automatic door captured him in. It spooked him to the point of never coming back again.

On the slopes, before strong freeze hits us.

Even this wind-blasted ridge could be skied - if one was careful.

Then I spotted some cat once, in the dark, near our compost, but she ran away. In the meantime my war on sparrows continued. I purchased a plastic owl and then some more flat, reflexive owl cutouts, hoping that they would not scare my chickens and goaties. A few days after installing the plastic predators, I fed the chickens in the morning and began to stuff hay into goat feeders, when Ozzy flew by me, stepped on Cindy the chicken, who stuck to her chicken nature and began squawking and flapping wings like crazy, which spooked the other goats and chickens. I reckoned that either Ozzy or Cindy got frightened by the rattling artificial owl and that it would pass in a while. It did not — goats stood in the pasture and gazed at me with disrespect as I would still venture into and out of the spooky shed. When I brought Toad the chicken right to the grain, she ripped out of my grasp and executed a vertical take-off over the fence, away and onto the goat pasture.

I went again through the shed, checked in the coop, but I found no threat. So I decided my animals were crazy and since they insisted on being obstinate in the pasture, they were free to do so until they changed their minds, while I would return home and finally have my breakfast. I was closing the run gate when MEOW sounded from under the coop. I knelt down to check out the source — and spotted a tiny tabby kitten. I called Sid to bring me some cat granules from the house, and hoped that the kitten wouldn't run away before he does. It did not run, and stuffed itself with the granules as if it did not eat for a week (author's note — probably did not eat for a lot longer).

Tom accompanied me on Nordic skis.

In the middle of arctic winter, a hungry kitten showed up at our door.

We have an outdoor cat house near our chicken coop, which I had got some time ago for our other cats, but it was clear it could not stay there now, as the kitten kept spooking the chicken and goats after all. I desperately pondered where to place the cat house so that the kitten could use it, while away from the chickens — and at the same time out of the wind. An arctic wave was being forecast, with sub-zero (°F) temperatures. When I returned after finishing my breakfast, the kitten had crawled into a pallet that serves as a raised veggie plot bed — so I moved the cat box there — near my farm pile, protected by the veggie bed and within sight of the kitten, who got some more of the granules.

In the evening, the kitten was nowhere to be seen, so I put more granules into the cat box, hoping it would find them. It was Thursday and the arctic wave was supposed to hit us on Friday night. On Friday morning the granules were gone — but they could have been taken by mice or ground squirrels or anybody else. I refilled the bowl, but it stayed full through the afternoon. Setting out to close down my animals against cold, I opened our front door to the porch, and a meow sounded. The kitten decided to bypass the cat box and show up at the source. It brought a cat paté right to the porch; then I labored to move the cat box to the porch, upon which the kitten did not hesitate, ignored the box and walked with me straight into our house.

Goaties and chickens have a warm shed (Toadie and Freddy).

The kitten found refuge from the cold on our couch - in its function of a third OUTDOOR cat.

There, it nonchalantly hopped up on a couch, being curiously observed by Hugo — and eventually, when Hugo settled down, the kitten's head nodded with fatigue. Suddenly it was quite visible how horribly skinny this little creature was — Hugo is small, but formed a sightly ball, while the kitten's bones and joints were sticking out. Hunger was obviously only a part of the problem; the kitten was totally exhausted, on one hand jerking up with every sound, on the other falling asleep half upright. We guessed it for a fall kitten, approximately four months old.

I brought a cat litter box from the garage, where it was stowed for the case our cats would still turn out to prefer outdoors and did not like to use a similar box in the basement. To my great relief the kitten used the box quite knowingly — dispersing my worry about "how to teach a kitten to use a litter box". Now I had to arrange an appointment with the vet — and we started to come up with names. We were still not sure if it was a girl or a boy. We tried on various ideas, wanting something with an Italian root to blend with our Hugo and Guido. In the end we found the name Dante — which seemed appropriate, for Dante is said to mean endurance — and Dante Alighieri had (fictitiously) visited Hell — while our kitten had apparently been through some little Hell literally. During the first week or two the kitten was practically two-dimensional, so horribly skinny it looked from top.

Sid's hike around Crystal Reservoir.

Another walk in Curt Gowdy Park.

I still have a complaint against the Department — it seems that this time again we were not issued an OUTDOOR cat. The kitten found its spot under the couch or on it (whenever it was quiet in the house) and absolutely refused to venture out. Our Guido, on one paw, fascinated the kitten, for they share the same tabby coat, and the kitten may have considered him a mildly grumpy uncle. On the other paw, Guido is deaf as a doorpost, and if the kitten jumped, hissed or growled (yes, threatened cat growls like a dog), Guido would completely ignore it. Alas, poor kind-hearted Hugo took the attacks of the skinny little feline too personally, began to hide and stay away — to the point he was afraid to go outside or back home — as his path went past the kitten's couch.

Many things got clearer after our vet's visit. After Dante became a small tornado in the office, they eventually managed to catch it, wrap in a towel like a crépe — inoculate — and declare (a) it was a girl and (b) she had adult teeth and thus would be rather ten than four months old. She was only horribly undernourished and did not grow up. And her spaying would have to be planned much sooner.

Meanwhile Carol scours all Nordic paths.

Gathering kids in the same spot at the same time, to celebrate Sid's birthday, was a tough challenge.

Besides cat experiences, I started to hope for some snow in January and February; eventually we got to go skiing. That is, Tom and myself; Sid and Lisa don't go for winter frolicking as much. Well, I'm getting better, but cross-country skiing is still better for me than plain hiking, and thus we went our separate way even on Sid's birthday. Sid went hiking and I skiing, then we met in Laramie with our kids for a dinner. They are complicated as well, for Lisa goes to school and to work on weekdays, while Tom has school on weekdays and works on weekends at a ski resort — finding a moment when we're all available is a bit difficult (I work on Fridays night and around noon on Sundays). But we worked it out and properly celebrated Sid's milestone (he's sixty!!!) birthday.