Always in habit to have fun, but in the educational way, we transport you in the skin of a cat in order to know the essential steps to transform the latter into a playful walker…
My owner did not believe it: “I can’t believe that happen. How many videos of cats collapse on the side without moving as soon as we put on a harness? It proves that cats are not made for walking on a leash! ”
However, here I am strutting on the sidewalk of the neighborhood, tail and head high, making the other owners envy mine and stop him to ask how he did. Although, to see the quantity of pretty ladies who accost my owner, if all the unmarried men of the neighborhood did the same, their celibacy would stop quickly!
Of course, this is not done for all cats. So, for some it will be a pleasure, for others it will be a trial. We must respect everyone’s desire. For me, it was done step by step and so gradually that I learned to love to walk on a leash. It took several steps before getting to walk so easily.
The first step was to lock me in the bathroom and offer me a succulent meal of cane food. While I was enjoying myself, my owner dangled the harness in front of me. He did that for two or three sessions. So far, nothing very complicated. Then, to be able to reach the cane and to stuff myself once more, he made me pass my head in the harness. Step by step, he put the harness on me while I was eating. It was funny and easy … after all, as good a cat as I am, as long as it does not hurt and the food is good we do not care about the rest, right? Then he added playing to all of that and it was by playing that I understood that I had no reason to believe that it was a straitjacket and that my movements were very fluid! As usual, I could move.
So I went from 1 minute to 2, to 5 then to 15 minutes by having the harness on me. As I seemed to become more comfortable, my human left me full access to the house, but still making sure to play with me. Then, came the time that the harness did not bother me anymore and that’s when he added the leash and started walking around the house with me. He prevented me to go to certain places and he rewarded me when I did not insist.
Finally, the first outings came. He took me in his arms and didn’t let me out of the house myself. My owner still proceeded step by step. If he had not done that, I could have taken bad habits and got out without my harness!
At first I only went out on the balcony, in the arms of my owner, with my beautiful harness. Always with cane food or playing to make it all nice and he brought me inside after a few minutes. Each exit was longer and farther and farther away, but without leaving me on the ground. I quietly noticed his stratagem: my owner brought me back safely inside, but only after I showed a small sign of improvement in my stressful state pushing me, to relax more and more quickly. He is smart my human, don’t you think?
Finally, after several sessions, he put me down, always with food and playfulness. It was the time to decide what kind of walk I was going to do. Was he going to take me for a walk or was I going to walk him? Obviously, the second method was much easier for him, but I was not going very far. One day he used the good old method of encouraging me to walk in one direction, rewarding me for walking a bigger and bigger distance from a few centimeters to several meters, and finally realizing that I had done the neighborhood tour … after three weeks!
You have to be patient with a cat! This method is a little more restrictive for me, because I had to follow a path, but I want to go further! The other way is very pleasant, because I decide to go where I want, even though there are certain dangers … like the time one evening when I was inspecting a bush, I fell face to face with a skunk! Let’s say that my human and I still “smell” the effects of this evening!
