Welcome Home Gideon

Introducing you to the latest member of the farm family

I wrote this week’s post in between farm chores in the time-stealing polar vortex that has settled in the southern United States. The farm isn’t designed for super cold weather so our days are reduced to bundling, breaking ice, unbundling, hauling water from the house and just generally bracing against the wind and waiting for it to pass.

Sessions with clients have come to a standstill and as Christopher tells the guys at work when he takes a day off to help on the farm, “We feed the horses and water the horses and then we feed the horses and then water the horses and then we feed the horses . . .”

What I really want to talk about this week is our new kitten.

The world is nuts right now. Kittens make everything better.

Let’s get started.

Ivan was an immense help as I wrote.

For twenty years my muse/familiar/partner-in-crime was an Abyssinian cat who slept under the covers with me and let me play with his toes. I called him Ivan after a kid I met on a Volga River boat cruise in 1995 Russia. The kid named Ivan walked around studying a book of American English and would pop the collar of his blue jean jacket and tell me how important he was.

Ivan the cat resulted from a full-blooded Abyssinian mama with feet curled elegantly like a claw-foot tub and a street cat father. The mama cat, great with children, crawled into an open bathroom window in the house I shared with my college roommates. I came home from Russia and chose a male kitten to serve as a witness and companion to my launch into the world of decisions, responsibilities, and blunders.

When Ivan passed in 2016, I said goodbye to litter boxes and vowed never to have another indoor cat again. I’d spent two decades with my cat soulmate. It seemed impossible to even consider filling the void his passing left in my life.

In the barn it’s a different matter. We’ve rescued untold litters of feral kittens. They patrol the barn offering mouse control and general delight until they retire at an old age on the farmhouse porch where they oversee their dominion and train up the youngsters with well-timed smacks.

Fast forward to 2025. I thought I wanted a puppy.

We’re down to one creature in the house — my beloved border collie Jolene. She’s getting a little older and I knew that I would be hospitalized if something happened to her and there wasn’t another inside creature that needed my attention.

In the days following Hurricane Helene, a Great Pyrenees kept making an appearance in a way that felt like an omen. Pyrs are notorious wanderers and we speculated so many stories accompanying this dog’s apparition. I was in bad shape mentally and physically and the Pyr’s passing through felt like a promise, like new life, like hope. So much felt so wrong in the world but the beauty of this bear-dog put a hunger in me for moving forward and moving on.

The promise of this dog got me up in the morning. We left sandwiches for her where the fallen trees met the rock border of the forest.

I half-heartedly put the word out that I was in need of a Pyrenees puppy.

Every animal in my life has come to me from a tone I sing in my heart. I’ve never actually looked for a new addition. They just find me.

Nothing came.

The holidays came and went and it had me feeling a little reckless. For no reason whatsoever, I said to Harriet, “Maybe I need a Maine Coon.” They’re huge, they love water, they’re dog-like.

“Siberians are hypo-allergenic. I know a breeder in Tennessee.”

I’m allergic to cats. This has never stopped me, but how lovely it would be to bring a cat into the house without nine-lifetimes worth of sneezing and swollen eyes. I’m also allergic to horses, dogs, trees, grass, and autumn.

I’ll send the breeder a message, I thought, friending her on Facebook.

But I didn’t.

I waited.

Susan Boardman in Nashville, Tennessee is a treasure trove of Siberian cat knowledge. Harriet found her through a Polish breeder who was part of a network of cat lovers running supplies over the border when the bombing began in Ukraine. Susan’s Keuka Ridge Cattery produces kittens that remain true to the sweet temperament and intelligence of this ancient breed.

The Siberian cat can be traced back 1,000 years to domestication in the forests of Siberia. They are also called the Siberian Forest Cat and their triple-layered coat keeps them toasty in their sub-arctic climate of origin. They’re known for being friendly hunters with a wicked sense of humor. Characterized by round features and glorious, bushy tails, Siberians are slightly smaller than their Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest cousins but grow to hefty proportions.

They’re dog-like and smart. Siberians have less Fel d 1 in their saliva and, as a result, are less likely to cause an allergic reaction in humans.

Feeling like I’d paid significant penance with rescues, I was ready to buy my way into the characteristics I truly wanted.

Christopher speaks cat. He was raised by a crazy cat lady and he’s basically a cat himself. When I kiss him — he purrs. We don’t have children. There hasn’t been a ton of joy since our wedding. He urged me to reach out to Susan Boardman.

A kitten. A male. A tabby.

She had one ready to go home in a few weeks.

Gideon.

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I fell instantly in love with that face.

Christopher has spent a lot of time fixing airplanes in Nashville. He’s made the route from upstate South Carolina to the birthplace of country music many times but Hurricane Helene wiped out a section of Interstate 40 and the detour follows switchbacks and rural roads through the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I left the driving to him and played my recent podcast episode with Tamar Reno while we drove through Chandler and Hot Springs and Marshall, North Carolina curving through the mountains on the way to Tennessee.

We followed the scoured, twisted aftermath of the landslides and flooding, the roping snake of the newly formed French Broad River with its northern flow through the towns she changed forever in this meteorologic and geologic anomaly — this once-in- a-lifetime (we hope) storm.

It was the first time I had seen the heart of the devastation firsthand.

These places still need your help. These towns are blinking like newborns acclimating to a new normal. There is nothing in these hills that will ever be the same as before.

A silence flooded the car as we followed traffic back onto the interstate where the detour merges into the normalcy — the rest stops and gas stations and restaurants and exits — beyond the destruction.

This region is forever changed and it still needs your help.

❤️

Beyond being driven for errands and essentials on Sundays, I haven’t really left the barn since Christopher and I were married in September. The ultimate goal of retrieving a kitten made the trip easier, but I still went through a process of acclimation as the miles ticked by.

The only option for parking at the hotel in west Nashville was valet — and we discovered that no one working there could drive a stick. Yet, we still had to pay for parking — whatever.

We met old friends for dinner.

I could hardly sleep.

It had been so long since I was excited about anything that was all about me. Not me as a farm owner or a writer or a friend — just me.

Gideon.

He tried to crawl out of my arms when I first met him.

We took note of everything Susan told us and gathered Gideon and his belongings into a carrier and hit the road back to Greenville.

For good luck, we drove him around The Parthenon and offered him to Athena for a blessing.

Built for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Exposition, The Parthenon in Nashville, TN is a full-scale replica of the Athenian original.

There are several things to note here.

1. I live my life in continuous action or the worry of action.

2. There is an invisible string attached to me when I leave the farm.

3. I don’t do well with stillness.

As we drove, Gideon fell asleep on my favorite blanket on my lap. He grounded me into a purity of stillness in the first hour.

He’s been doing the same every minute since we arrived home to the farm.

Gideon is actually very tiny and he was a great car traveler.

A constant stream of frozen visitors have made their way up the hill from the barn to marvel at the beauty of this tiny creature. Within 24 hours he came alive in his new surroundings and has thoroughly played with every cat toy, tower, ribbon, and empty box he’s been given. He sleeps all night quietly in a carrier beside my head by the bed because we’re still slowly introducing him to the border collie.

It’s only fitting that his arrival came with the Siberian cold front. He’s tucked in the house and in our hearts and doesn’t have any trouble finding a warm spot.

As we drove home with this new wonder, we received news that one of our dearest at Bramblewood encountered an unimaginable loss. Like inland hurricanes and housing insecurity in below-freezing temperatures, some things just reduce us down to our essence. It’s hard for me to find words that are worth writing as my spirit bows humbly to those around me who are being felled by heartbreak.

When words are scarce, lists are good. Here are some things for you to explore:

• January Subscriber Zoom: Friday, January 31st at 6:00 PM EST — we’re getting back into the swing of our monthly gatherings and I cannot wait to see your faces and catch up a week from Friday.

• The Mountains Still Need Your Help: My list of individuals and community initiatives that still need your help as the Blue Ridge Mountains recover from Hurricane Helene is updated as needs arise. But Swannanoa Communities Together has my heart forever.

• New Podcast Episode: I am thrilled to be putting the finishing touches on a new podcast episode with New Zealand’s own fabulous Jane Pike. It should be hitting your inboxes and all your favorite listening platforms by the end of the week. Jane is a well known horse woman but we’re — weirdly — not talking about horses. This conversation is all about creating. It is beautiful and I can’t wait for you to join us.

I’m going to sneak off and feed horses and haul water — and feed horses and haul water — and feed horses and haul water. I thank you for joining me here every week and I hope your world is handing you some creativity, awe, and wonder. If it’s not delivering, I urge you to go out and find it.

Like Gideon having discovered that he can meet me at the door and walk in front of me, tripping me up and stating his presence, your creativity can often be really hard to find because it’s right under your nose.

The world needs your stories.

I hope awe trips you hard this week.

Love,
Kim

Gideon is a thinker.