COVID-19 Social Distancing Diary: walking kitty

Who said dogs need to have all the fun? One of the things I enjoy about my quarantine is being able to walk my kitty. We have two indoor kitties that love exploring the great outdoors. Walking kitty keeps me fit in the sense that, if I’m walking kitty, I’m not mindless eating. It’s also great getting sunshine after hours indoors.

I give credit to the people that I live with for training our kitties to be comfortable in a leash. We leash-trained one of our kitties when he was just a couple months old. Starting early helped a ton because he grew very comfortable with the leash very fast. Our other cat, on the other hand, is a bit more skittish in nature. For the latter kitty, our first outings consisted of him just lying on the concrete, unsure what to do with himself. As he got more bold, we had incidents of him slipping off the leash when he got spooked (which was pretty often).

I will warn you ahead of time: kitty will probably slip off the leash at some point when you’re training them. Every kitty is different, so plan ahead of time in case this happens (i.e. how do you lure them back in, what are dangerous places they can get into, etc.). We are fortunate to have a backyard that the kitties can roam around in and that keeps them relatively contained. We can sometimes lure kitty back with food or a string toy. Other than that, we have to just wait until kitty decides they want to come back in.

We use Puppia’s small dog harness. We coupled the leash with a bungie cord. I find the bungie cord is helpful in case kitty does decide to dash — a bungie cord is much less jarring.

Walking kitty means going where kitty wants to go. I’ve been working on lightly tugging the leash when I don’t want kitty going somewhere, and I think that’s been working. Other than that, be ready to walk on muddy parts when kitty decides they want to roll themselves on wet dirt.

Walking kitty takes practice, both so that you the human can get more comfortable with kitty in the harness and for kitty to be comfortable in the harness. Every kitty is different and only you know how your kitty’s temperament, so always use your best judgement and follow your instinct. Our skittish kitty is now super confident in the leash and has not slipped off it for months now.