About Cathy

 

 

A woman in white shirt standing next to wooden pole.
Catharine Melin-Moser.
Photo courtesy of Hiltrud Melin.
A statue of a horse standing on top of a rock.
Gravesite of Sir Barton, America’s First Triple Crown Winner.
Douglas, WY. Photo by Cathy Moser.

My autobiographical background remains a perpetual work-in-progress. Horses have always been prominent, and I especially love the Thoroughbreds. Never owning a horse as a child or teen, many of my school friends in my hometown of Broomfield, Colorado, owned them. That was the next best thing. Grey-colored Silver, chestnut-colored Radish, and Patches, a nasty paint, are a few of the horses I rode and was occasionally thrown from.

 

The years passed before I could afford the property on which to put my first horse. I was then age 42. Tanner was short legged, stocky, and frumpy looking, nothing near my love, a leggy, sexy Thoroughbred, and how I came to owning a Norwegian Fjord is a story for another day.

 

My work as a freelance writer took me to a Montana ranch, and what a thrill it was to pet a grandson of Secretariat. Research for my history-themed articles had me combing through musty newspapers dating to the 1880s and ’90s. Snippets of two or three sentences told of Thoroughbred horses from Montana winning eastern racing’s biggest prizes. The horses kept tapping me on the shoulder until the day the epiphany struck: “I’ll write a story about them.” This was the birth of When Montana Outraced the East: The Reign of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886-1900.

 

 

During 13 years of research (as of 2024) for my book, I traveled to an eclectic mix of places.

Top row from left: Keeneland racetrack, a palatial horse farm, and the Keeneland Library. These were my stops in Lexington, Kentucky.

Bottom row: Marcus Daly Mansion, Hamilton, MT; Samuel E. Larabie headstone, Hillcrest cemetery, Deer Lodge, MT; accepting an award for Scottish Chieftain at the 2015 Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Great Falls, MT.

Photo credits: Keeneland Library entryway courtesy of Keeneland Library Collection. Award for Scottish Chieftain by Donna Faber/MCHF. All others by Cathy Moser.

 

Links to My Writings About American Horse Racing

The Sixty-Miler

Montana Quarterly/Four Quarters LLC – Fall 2021

The Wrong Horse

Big Sky Journal LLC – Summer 2015

https://bigskyjournal.com/the-wrong-horse/

A horse standing in the grass with its mouth open.

Miss Darebin foaled The Wrong Horse.

Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University.

 

 

 

A horse standing in the dirt near some grass.

Inverness sired The Wrong Horse.

Marcus Daly Mansion.