Now when anyone mentions the idea of taking a cat for a walk, I immediately think of Garfield and the genuine naugahide collar and lead. It did not end well. But Barbs is doing her 10 000 steps a day challenge, and I usually shut the dogs in, and open the gate so she can drive in from work... and the last few days she's gone for a quick walk over to the shearing shed to get her steps up, on coming home. Sans dogs (as we ALWAYS drive them to walk anywhere. Therefore break-outs are not nearly as obvious or tempting to dogs. Ours are old now, but we live on stock farm. Dogs do not roam.) I go along to hear about the day, and for company. We've noticed on the last two that we have even more company... three cats. Of course not doing anything lowering like walking with us. No, never! They just happened to be going the same direction, and if a sheep suddenly bleats... very close to us, in the same direction.
Both Barbs and I had severe insomnia on Monday night. It was weird - both still awake at three. I'm a fairly rotten sleeper, but Barbs is usually good at it. We got up at midnight, and found the supply of sardines and condensed milk was rather low. I am convinced that is why i couldn't get back to sleep.
There's something wrong (IMO) with the idea of driving your dogs to walkies. In fact it sounds terribly yuppie townie.
ReplyDelete"Oh no Lucinda, we always walk Rex and Fido in Epping Forest. Sooo much moah charming than that nasty pavement in Chelsea. The dogs love it but it has to be said they dooo get awfully muddy sometimes. It takes the butler hours to make them presentable again. One tries to do it every evening but sometimes the social whirl is such we let the chauffeur walk them on his own."
heh. true. But I had an escapist dog - and the problems with that, and my vet suggested this - when you move to a new place, make the fence as secure as possible, and then get the idea that fun places are actually only reached by car. Then your only problem becomes getting into the car. Actually we often only take them a few 100 metres away, but there is no real interst in going walkies without us.
DeleteA family who lives round the corner from us had 2 white dogs and 2 black cats. Every afternoon when they took the two dogs on their leads for a walk around the block, the two black cats always walked along, like you say, 'just happening to go in the same direction'. It was a funny sight, and went on for a couple of years.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, walking a cat on a leash is an exercise in patience. I had a cat who hated to stay at home when I was away on holiday, and as the people who's cabin we always go to didn't mind me putting up mosquito screens to keep the cat in, I started taking him along. He much preferred that, even if he hated the travelling day. I didn't want him to get lost far from home, so while there he only went out in a harness on an extendable leash. This meant moving a few meters, waiting 10 minutes while he sat under a bush and looked at things, rushing 10 meters and waiting 15 minutes while he lay flat in the long grass, mosying along a few more meters, spend 5 minutes sniffing a bush, etc. After half an hour we'd have moved at most 20 or 30 meters, but he had a grand old time anyway. Getting home was either a fast run if he saw a dog or a motorbike, or eventually picking him up and carrying him. It's not at all like walking a dog!
Hanneke
:-) The thought of walking cat-on-a-lead speed is rather like going for a walk with my entomologist friend Pete. It took us over an hour to cover a stretch we normally did in five minutes. But he'd had a wonderful time of it. Perhaps entos and cats are related :-)
DeleteI guess they spend a similar amount of time looking at the same sorts of things: butterfies, busy little buzzers, creepy-crawlies one might pounce on and capture, if they're deemed interesting enough... the pettability-factor would probably be quite different, though. :)
DeleteHanneke
Well, fortunately his wife thinks he's cuddly. So I have two lovely God-daughters (to whom I dedicated Cuttlefish)
DeleteWe had a farm cat when I was a kid who followed us wherever we went on the farm, even when we went swimming in the river. Consequently, every photo I have from my childhood was photo-bombed by Smudgie...
ReplyDeleteHey! The cat hero in my first ever book (unsold) was Smudge. And as a result so was the folks Labby. Who was also a photo-hog. But we loved her anyway.
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