ADVENTURE
CATS As local middle school science teacher Alanna Piccillo backpacked through a canyon in Moab, Utah, her fearless felines followed, strapped into harnesses and meowing contently while strutting through the dirt, tails high. Unwilling to accept a simple life of window birdwatching and dozing on the couch, Lewis and Clark, a pair of 2-year-old littermates, are adventure cats, trained as Piccillo’s outdoor recreation companions. Piccillo decided to adopt a kitten in 2018 after gaining inspiration from the thousands of Instagram accounts dedicated to cats and their outdoor excursions. “I got on Instagram and I started seeing these cats that people hike and go camping with, and I kind of became obsessed with adventure cats,” Piccillo said.
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JENNA KRETSCHMAN JUDY MORROW ERICA KOLANOWSKI AGATHA MOREIRA
In preparation, she dove into resources published by AdventureCats.org, an organization dedicated to teaching cat parents how to turn their typical house cats into outdoor explorers. In the summer of 2018, Piccillo showed up to a Roice-Hurst Humane Society cat adoption event to pick out a hiking buddy. She noticed Lewis first, a fluffy seal point, but quickly realized she couldn’t just pick one. She also adopted his brother, Clark, a handsome long-haired tabby. “As soon as they got comfortable in the house, I bought two little harnesses for them on Amazon that didn’t even fit them yet," Piccillo said. "And I would take them to Riverbend Park on a leash. I bought a clicker [for clicker training] and a target wand [for them to follow], and just started running
