A very fun idea. The savant cow reminded me of Terry Pratchett's camels which when they're outwardly appearing to be stubborn are internally computing complex mathematics.
At first I thought it WAS a camel. But then I got the bovine references.
The first thing that popped into my mind was an unwilling Dish of the Day. (I let You GUESS what I am talking about)
When Wilfred came and explained the reality TV thing that was my thought too. I also groaned inwardly and immediately began to hate Wilfred because I despise reality TV and everything related to it.
Uhhhh.... so, could you explain to me what the ending line meant? I thought I was understanding everything until that line, which I couldn't figure out.
A causality loop is a kind of logical impossibility where a series of events constantly triggers itself. Sort of like a chicken and the egg problem. Which came first? One way to solve it would be with a causality loop. The chicken comes back in time, and lays the egg from which it hatches so that it can lay its own egg.
The space-faring bovine seemed to think that he (she?) was here in order to maintain some sort of causality loop that eventually leads to the existence of a space-faring bovine race. Simply put: Bess is the matriarch of hyperintelligent cows. If she dies in this gun fight, there are no hyperintelligent cows. So they send a spaceship back in time to rescue her so that she can get on with producing a race of hyperintelligent cows so that they will be able to eventually go back in time and save her from dying so that.... and so on.
An excellent ending for a time traveling story in my opinion.
The rest of the story was rather silly, but fun.