In the days that followed...
Tangerine gained many temporary companions, only to keep losing them.
They died of all sorts of "incurable illnesses."
Only a few months old, Tangerine witnessed a hundred ways for those "companions" to die, and suffered terribly.
Seeing the kitten so upset, Madara Uchiha finally could not help suggesting to Yanbai that, at their age, perhaps they should just eat vegetarian...
Yanbai could not stand for that. He did not need to eat himself, since he could drink Madara's blood, but if Madara ate only vegetables, surely the quality of the protein in his hemoglobin would suffer?
No, no, no. Those were all excuses. Yanbai simply wanted meat!
Yanbai decided to lower the odds of little Tangerine's "friends" falling "ill."
Yanbai personally entered the Woods and hunted an enormous wild boar. He butchered and processed it out in the wilderness, cutting it up with Wind Release, washing it with Water Release, and marinating it with the spices he carried. Then he turned it straight into cured meat, Chinese sausage, and minced meat from various cuts. He even used ninjutsu to make several large bags of cat food for Tangerine.
He also combined Fire Release with Wind Release to dry everything, packed it into a Storage Scroll, and brought it back to the Princess Mausoleum.
Then, when Orochimaru and Tobirama Senju came home, they saw dozens of rows of Chinese sausage and cured meat swaying in the wind over the freshly snow-covered, windswept ground between the edge of the barrier and the entrance to the Underground Palace.
What followed was that winter's menu: assorted vegetables stir-fried with cured meat and Chinese sausage, rice casseroles with assorted mushrooms, cured meat, and Chinese sausage, fried rice with eggs, cured meat, and Chinese sausage, assorted grains steamed with cured meat