This Cat Could be Your Guide on the Appalachian Trail

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Foxglove Farm boasts a newly renovated bathroom and kitchen, easy access to the Appalachian Trail, and a private patio that looks out onto the forests of Garrison, just an hour and change north of New York City. But the Airbnb’s most popular amenity may just be an orange cat named Cinamen who loves to hike with guests.

Cinamen went viral earlier this month after X user Sebastian S. Cocioba posted about his stay with the cat. “Went with my partner upstate and the AirbnB host’s cat took us for a guided hike along the Appalachian Trail,” wrote Cocioba alongside photos of Cinamen stalking through the moss, sitting on Cocioba’s chest during a break, and perching on the edge of a puddle. “Apparently this is what she does with every guest. She would complain when we took a wrong turn off the trail and knew the way back. Amazing cat. Would apocalypse with.” The post went viral; as of the time of writing, it has been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

While Cinamen—actually male, owner Trisha Mulligan says—may be new to the internet, he’s not new to the trail by any means. A quick scan of Foxglove Farm’s reviews turns up more than a dozen mentions of the cat: “We were thrilled to have her sweet kitty [Cinamen] walk with us on the trail for a bit so we got to check off hiking with a cat from our bucket list,” one guest wrote. “We had an amazing time with [Cinamen] who went on a hike with us, coolest cat on earth,” wrote another. “[Cinamen], the cat, accompanied us on the hike and was a reliable tour guide,” a third noted.

At times she judged the crap out of us for being too slow. I got a camera roll full of judgement, lololol pic.twitter.com/shxtU6lQwK

— Sebastian S. Cocioba???????? (@ATinyGreenCell) March 12, 2024

“I call him the concierge, because he just loves people,” Mulligan says. “You know, each color, they have different personalities. And there’s something about an orange cat that’s very social, and we have a very social cat.”

Mulligan, an herbalist and ethnobotanist, has lived in Garrison in a house above the apartment she rents on Airbnb, for “about 10 years” since moving there from Brooklyn with her family. Cinamen came into the picture 8 years ago when she adopted him and his sibling as kittens from an animal shelter. Although his littermate has since passed, Cinamen thrived as an outdoor cat in Garrison’s woods, hanging out with Mulligan in the garden or following her or her children onto the Appalachian Trail via a roughly 100-yard path over a laurel-covered ridge that Mulligan marked with dinosaur-shaped blazes through her property. Other adventure cat owners have had to put a lot of time into training and acclimating their cats to the outdoors, but Cinamen took to it naturally, Mulligan says.

“When we’re going out of our house, he follows me,” she says. “You know, like, when you’re gardening and your cat jumps on your back? He’s always with me when I’m in the garden, which I love.”

Most of Mulligan’s guests seem to agree; some, she says, come back repeatedly just to visit the cat.

“There’s this one guy, this Russian guy who comes back regularly. He never leaves reviews, but he always sends me pictures—he’s a photographer—and he books because he wants to be with Cinamen and he wants to do the trail with Cinamen,” she says. “I’ve had other people say, ‘Oh my God, we were hiking and lost, but Cinamen wouldn’t let us get lost.’” (Downside: If you’re hoping for Cinamen to join your tramily, you may be out of luck. While Mulligan says that Cinamen sometimes stays out long enough with hiking guests to worry her, he rarely spends the night outside.)

Cats, of course, aren’t known for their consistency, so if you’re thinking of booking a stay at Foxglove, it’s worth mentioning that there’s no money-back guarantee Cinamen will be interested in your hiking plans; one reviewer noted that she was “jealous of other guests who got to meet a cat.” But overall, your chances are pretty good—as long as you’re willing to respect his pace.

“I tell people, he’s gonna slow you down because he’s gotta look at stuff and he’s gotta pose,” Mulligan says. “I’ve had people that are hiking that really do slow down and be with him, which is kind of my thing.”