You put a cat on a leash and are surprised he doesn’t like it?
Cats don’t do leashes, honey.
I put a harness on Scooter in 1992, and he has had it off only for boarding and for when I changed the old one to the new one. It makes a great handle, which is nice. He hugged the rug for a day or two and slunk around until he got used to it, but once he got used to it, putting the leash on was a snap (really!). He ended up walking better than my ex-dog. And we kept him on a line in our fenced in back yard.
Yikes! Cat people are awfully judgy!!
This wiki is somewhat related. But, I am posting it because I find it amusing.
I like how they tell you to take the harness off and then ignore the cat. And, put it back on and praise them. I think cats would prefer the harness off ignoring option, really.
Also, I liked this bit:
Anyway. I can’t help. The only thing I could do with a cat when I had one was to try to teach him to walk like a human. And, that did not work out long term.
Yeah, like the captor in “The Collector” was trying to make the girl he holds prisoner happy.
All we need is a nuts PETA supporter to come in and start babbling on about how animal domestication is slavery, and we’ll really have the salt going in her wounds. Did someone pee in your cereal lately?
We’re also missing the “how dare you let your cats outside” crowd.
I’ve seen pet strollers like Guinastasia mentioned – a standard stroller with a mesh-enclosed seating area. I wonder if the mesh could stand up to a claw-bearing kitty?
Not true at all. Depends on the cat’s personality, obviously, and starting them on it when they’re young is optimal, but no, honey, some cats do leashes very well. Seen it with my own eyes. Honey.
Now gone Bernie and Cleo walked on leashes just fine. It took Cleo a bit longer, but she was the “pretty” one.
Lucy, in her previous life, was an outdoor kitty. One agreement made when we adopted her was that she become an indoor cat. We do take her outside on a harness and leash, and she’s okay with it until she sees a squirrel and tried to bolt after it. Then she pouts. Whenever she hears the leash jingle she there at the door sitting pretty, waiting to be harnessed.
Kyla- my two cent impression is now that you’ve allowed your cat out, another neighbor cat has decided to be a pain in the tush and make your place his/hers. We have a neighborhood cat that didn’t care when Bernie and Cleo were here, but something about Lucy ticked it off. At least once a week we go though a shortened version of the howling. The first time it scared the bejeebers out of me. We squirt her with water until she jumps out of the window, I close it, and close the curtain. It took her a few time to clue in on NOT jumping into a closed window. Heh. Now, if the other cat comes around, all I need to do is say her name strongly and she hops down.
Forget animal rights. I’m just prodding the OP about their apparent lack of recognition of the obvious reality of the situation, and the cat’s utterly unsurprising response.
And to answer your question, no, not that I’m aware. I’m always like this.
Kyla,
You might try going online to drsfostersmith.com. They have several offerings, including a CATalogue, please don’t stone me.
Fat little Cookie Monster used to have the same behaviours, but I’ve inadvertently come up with something that has alleviated it. Maybe you could adapt it?
She began as an indoor/outdoor cat, but then I moved somewhere I’m not confident in her abilities to deal with, so now she’s an indoor/monitored-outdoor cat. When I first moved in here, she used to spend a huge amount of time crying to be let outside, but over the past two years we have come to an arrangement: she knows that nearly every morning we will go out in the garden together and she will get to prowl her territory (the lawn) while I sip a coffee and watch.
However, she also knows that if she goes into any escape routes, I will descend on her with great vengeance and furious anger. She does occasionally approach such areas and I growl at her, whereupon she looks guilty and slinks back into the center of the garden. The few (and becoming increasingly less frequent) times she actually sets foot into an escape route, I run at her shouting and clapping my hands and she bounds back into the house and runs and hides in her bed.
It’s not an ideal arrangement, but it’s better than worrying about her disappearing, and the regularity of her garden visits does seem to have diminished her whining to be let out.
Incidentally, when she was about two years old, I did try walking her with a harness and leash, but it was a disaster. We’d get the harness on, I’d dress my wounds, we’d go outside and the moment I applied any pressure to the leash she’d just flop over sideways and refuse to move. To get her back into the house I’d have to lift her, whereupon she’d scratch me again.
Had one cat that had a similar addiction to the outdoors – I would put her on a harness connected to a run (just a cable stretched between a couple of trees).
You have to keep an eye on the cat because they do have a tendency to tangle themselves and make sure there’s nothing to climb or they’ll manage to to tangle the lead in branches and dangle like a failed bungie jumper (this can obviously be hazardous).
Not a perfect solution, but it was a compromise we both could live with (not so much the luckless chipmunks that wandered into the radius of her lead.)
I’ve seen cats in the parks in Chicago and they have harness on and they’re cool with it.
I don’t know how they train those cats but a few of them are OK with it, so it is possible.
He bites you? Is he de-clawed? If he is then he should never be allowed outside. You’d feel pretty bad if you were walking kitty and a fox or dog came over and grabbed him. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself or climb a tree.
Letting a cat bite you without beating the crap out of it is, IMHO, not a good idea - but I get yelled at by cat “lovers” when I mention that, so I won’t…
Cats laying their ears back at me get smacked up along side the head; a “playful” nip terminates the petting session with a short swat on the nose.
A full-on bite (has never happened (because of the above policies, I suspect)) would get the cat a full-on punch, and a bounce off the nearest wall - if it wants to see who can hurt the other more, I’m game.
Back to the matter at hand:
Do you have a carrier? Is the cat OK with it, or does he hate it, too?
If he is OK with it, put the cat in the carrier, place carrier outside. Ideally, you would pull up a chair beside him and keep him company during these outings. Once he gets to looking forward to outdoor (even if in carrier) time, put the harness in the carrier - maybe (VERY long shot) he would then associate harness with outdoors and accept wearing the harness.
Once it’s on him, it comes off pretty much never (get a waterproof one, so you can bathe the monster without removing the harness).
Just ran across this outdoor enclosure meant for condo/apartment dwellers:
Might be worth a try if he is still desperate to get outdoors.
I got a harness for my Wonton because he loves being outside but he’s blind so it’s just too dangerous. At first he really fought it. He didn’t like the feeling of the harness around him I think. Instead of giving up I left the harness on him, without the leash attached, for a few days. After he got used to it then we started working with him outside.
He doesn’t mind it at all now, but it did take some patience on both our parts.
As well you should get yelled at – that’s sick. I’m hoping this is satire.
I do this horrible thing sometimes but I’d better not mention it because I know what the inevitable reaction will be when I mention it and I wouldn’t want to derail the thread.
mentions it anyway
Squirt with water or loud noise. Let the little bugger associate that with outside and see how it goes.