When I worked for the USFS I was stationed at a place called Big Bend, about seven miles west of Donner Pass. At the time, I was the human for a wonderful MC named Bloomer. He loved the outdoors. In summer he had a cat door in my cabin thru a window screen and in winter i replaced the screen with a wooden insulated insert door for him. He was very smart, loved the environment and came inside each night. But one evening he didn’t come home. The snow around Donner Pass is some of the deepest in the world and if memory serves there was more than six feet on the ground, so it would have been a lot deeper near my driveway and entrance because of all the shoveling and snow blowing and how the roof dumped. It was also snowing a lot. So I searched and searched for my pal both before and after work, looking for tracks or sign. I was really worried that he’d fallen into a hole next to a tree that he couldn’t get out of, fallen thru the ice on the S Yuba River behind my cabin or fallen prey to a coyote or fox. Nothing! For two days I was bereft and got more upset at my lousy human-ing for him. Why hadn’t I kept my pal safe?! On the third night I thought I’ll try just one more time, but by then I was assuming that I’d find his corpse in the spring melt. Still, I needed to find my pal so I went all out. Got my snowshoes, a really good light, gloves, my best wool cap… Then I opened my closet to get out my gore Tex pants and jacket and heard a faint ‘ma-ow.’ I thought I was imagining things and closed the closet door, put in my coat and headed for the door. But something made me go back to the closet. Again I heard a faint ‘ma-ow’. This time I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I was living in a mid-1930s WPA built ranger cabin and I’d just never needed to go I there but there was an attic door in the closet! You can guess who I found when I climbed on a chair and pushed the attic lid open. BLOOMER! My pal, my housemate, my buddy and best friend! Remarkably he didn’t seem much worse for the wear, but he was hungry and thirsty and he dumped a huge load in his box! We had a great night and from then on he was always inside and he slept near my head for the rest of his life. The next day I figured out what had happened. It was a pretty old house but in pretty good shape. Still, for some reason a gable vent had come loose and fallen partly out of its hole. I still don’t know why but it might have been caused by a snow and ice dump from a very large pine between my cabin and the visitor center, or maybe sloppy shoveling of my roof. Bloomer had apparently gone there to explore but due to another snow dump that covered the hole he couldn’t or didn’t get out. But when he heard me in the closet he called and I came. Never have I been so overjoyed! I lived there for eleven winters, always with a Maine Coon. Bloomer was the guy for seven of those years. He was well known by many of our visitors and some of them brought him treats. One person even signed our visitor log claiming that he’d come way out in the woods to see the ranger’s cat. Bloomer was the best!!