I take my cat, Sylvia, on walks. No quite as you would a dog – though if we’re in agreement on which direction we’re going, she will walk alongside me and it looks like walking a dog. For a bit anyway.
When my husband and I decided to see if she would enjoy going out with us, I did a little reading online and while there were good tips, a lot of the information was pretty general. So it’s been a bit of an experiment as we figure out what works – and more precisely what works for our kitty.
We got to skip the step of “get your cat used to the harness” as the breeder had already done this for us. We live in an apartment on the third floor, so we can’t just walk out our back door and into the yard, but would have to got a bit further afield. So we decided to start with seeing if she would enjoy being outside with the aid of our kitty backpack. It has a couple advantages over a basic cat carrier. First, because it is a backpack, it’s much better for carrying a pet longer distances than holding the carrier in one hand. I picked it for this reason initially since we use public transportation and the vet is about a 25 min walk away. But the other advantage is that it comes with a short lead which can be clipped to the cat harness, so she can’t hop out of the carrier and run off.
We started by taking her on walks in the carrier on nice weekend afternoons, and monitoring her behavior and reactions to the outdoors. Once we were in a reasonably safe area (not along the road or crossing the street for example), we’d open the top of the carrier and let her poke her head out when she was interested. We quickly found she really enjoyed this as she would quickly pop her head up and look around.
We’d walk to somewhere quiet in one of the parks near us, and then we’d put the carrier down, open the front and switch the lead from the short one attached to the carrier to the leash that went with her harness. Very important: as when doing something like rock climbing or one of those adventure obstacle courses which uses safety harnesses, it’s important to clip the NEW leash on before un-clipping the OLD so that at all times she was on a lead and under our control.
The other rule we came up with was not to force her out of the carrier. We’d let her creep out in her own good time, and left it available to run back into if she felt afraid. Nor would we allow anybody to pet her in the carrier – this had to be her safe space. After a few moments, she would usually carefully step out and nose around until something would spook her, such as fellow walkers, a bicyclist, or a crack of a tree branch… then she’d head back into the carrier, and we’d begin our walk back home.
During our walks, we could see she loved being outside and would watch birds, bugs and her surroundings intently. When we’d pull the backpack out she’d quickly show up to circle around it and eventually hop in, ready for us to put on her harness. This seemed like quite a good sign that we should keep up the walks (bonus: she doesn’t hide when I pull out the backpack to go to the vet!) During our walks she is a bit like a jack-in-the-box, head popping up to watch, then disappearing when something would startle her. At first anything passing us, even on a nearby path, would cause her to hide. Overtime though, we could observe that she was watching and cataloging which things were a threat, and at what distance. A year later, a bicycle on the same path doesn’t cause the same fear, though she may still drop back into the back when it passes too close.
One benefit we also quickly realized from these excursions was having an extra sleepy content kitty after we got home. We’d let her out of the carrier, remove her harness and she’d head off to a well earned nap for a few hours. Need a quiet kitty in the evening? Take her on a walk!