Is taking a cat for a walk, on a leash, a totally ridiculous idea?

In My Humble Opinion
21

You don’t take a cat for a walk on a leash. The cat takes you.

Our Fiona is an indoor cat, but she came to us as an outdoor cat, and she wants to get outside from time to time. At such times, we’ll put on her harness, and she and I will go out to explore the back yard. She leads me around as she wishes–she wants to sniff this plant or look at that object, she goes right ahead, with me following. She doesn’t always go where I want her to go, so my only weapon if she wants to go somewhere she shouldn’t, such as into the neighbour’s yard, is to pick her up and carry her somewhere else to distract her. She lasts about 20 minutes or so before she gets too interested in the neighbour’s yard or gets just plain tired, and I end up taking her back inside. But at no time do I take her for a walk–she takes me.

22

I trained my cat to the leash from a young age, and she never learned to walk on it. It was as everyone has said - I either took her for a drag or she’d get 10 feet from the yard, get scared, and bolt back home (and if you think you can pick your cat up and run home with her at this point, you haven’t handled many freaked-out cats). You have to watch a cat on a leash almost constantly, too - you can’t just put them out and leave them, because they WILL get themselves tangled up and hanging by their neck in seconds, and the local cats who aren’t on leashes are free to come attack your leashed cat.

23

You’ve got to have a really calm cat. Just to give you an idea of how calm my leash walking cat is: I take him to the local Petco and he has no problem interacting with the dogs there. I couldn’t imagine doing it with any other cat.

He’s somewhat responsive to leash “signals” – e.g., he generally has learned to stay on walkways, he’s not supposed to walk on grass or try to go into enclosed spaces, and he knows a “tug” means he’s not supposed to go into a certain way, but he doesn’t always want to go where I want to go. Most of the time he’ll go, but he can get passive aggressive and just flop on the floor, belly side up.

24

My parent’s cats have always gone for walks with them, but then, they live out in the country so a leash has never been necessary. But cats definitely enjoy walking with their humans/slaves.

25

It’s obviously not a ridiculous idea, because our pet store has a rack of cat leashes for sale. Somebody is clearly buying them.
Certainly we did, and still do use cat leases on occasion. I’ve walked our cats many times. Eventually, after enough times, the cats knew where we didn’t want them to go, and we simply stopped using the leashes. Popular sayings to the contrary notwithstanding, you can herd cats.

26

Seems to depend very much on the temperment of the cat and relative size compared to the handler…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Dsc04559.jpg

27

I had trouble with my cat being able to wriggle out of harnesses too. He never freaked out really, he just was unwilling to have his course corrected by some jerk holding a leash and so would escape. Another message board I frequent suggested this style of harness, and he hasn’t been able to slip out of it yet.

28

My friend will take Finnigan on a walk on a leash. However, she’s afraid to because she thinks people will see what a fine well-behaved cat she has and keep him if he ever gets out. I’m almost afraid she’s right.

29

I’ve seen it and, yes, it looks completely ridiculous. That’s because it’s unusual and cats have a reputation for independence. But who cares? If the cat’s happy and you’re happy, let people stare. You’ll probably get more people coming up to you to marvel over the cat than people giving you the stinkeye anyway.

30

Totally ridiculous. The way you “walk” a cat is open the back door and let them out. They’ll come back when they get hungry. And putting your dog/cat in a stroller is a whole other level of crazy. A woman in our social circle puts her two little yappy ankle biters in a stroller for their “walks.” She’s widely considered to be nuts.

But as others have said, if it makes you happy and the animal happy, meh, who cares what everyone else thinks?

31

I “trained” Bernie to be okay with a leash when she was just a kitteh. We would go for walks around the lake with her walking ahead of me, usually with her on the grass and me on the path. There was a fair amount of her stopping, her wandering, her thinking it was nap time right there, but she was also well trained to do what I asked. Yes, I am talking about a cat. I would just say her name and pull up on the leash and off we’d go. Yeah, she’d glare at me sometimes, but oh well.
I loved watching the dogs tweak and she’d pay no attention - unless it was a little dog. Little dogs freaked her out.

Towards the end, with multiple vet visits, she wasn’t happy to see the harness and leash, but she always hopped right up into the car and walked into the vet office like it was not a big deal.

Our other cat, Cleo, OTOH, couldn’t get past low riding with the harness and leash on. We’d have to put her into the car, but she would hop out on her own. She’d low ride for a while, stand up straight, something would tweak her, and down she’d go. She was always harnessed and leashed in the yard, but we’d let her roam without holding the leash. I’m glad we did that - a neighbor dog got out of their yard and charged into ours. I was able to grab Cleo easily with the leash/harness and pick her up, versus trying to chase and grab a super squirmy furball.

32

My cats freeze and refuse to move when I put the harness on them (I bought it when we moved here from California and .

I think it’s fine if your cat cooperates. I don’t know how many cats would. Maybe it helps if you start them out on a leash and harness when they’re kittens.

I’d come up to you and want to pet the cat.

33

My cat walks fine on a leash and has been doing so for the last 5 years.

We never even trained him, he figured it on his own.

We take him out to parks and creeks all the time.

We have very few problems:

[ul]
[li]He dosent like paved trails, if we have to walk a paved trail, he will walk in the grass off to the side.[/li][li]He’s a 12 pound cat, he takes his time. Even if he walks briskly, my legs are still longer than his, so walks can be kind of slow.[/li][li]Occasionally, he’ll get cold or tired on longer walks and want to be held.[/li][li]We will only cross wet ground, but not shallow water. He has to be held when crossing creeks.[/li][/ul]
On the upshot, when he feels like he’s had enough, we can unclip his leash fro the harness and he will make his way back to the car and wait there. If the car door is one he will get on and just stay there.

(Admittedly, this is somewhat of a showoff point for us. Ocassionally, when we’re out walking and get close to the car, we’ll unclip him, and point at the car and he will make a beeline there to the surprise of passerby and park goers. The pointing is unnecessary… it’s mostly for people watching)

How this came to be:

He was an outdoor cat. We noticed that when we went on walks around the neighborhood, he would follow us at a discreet distance.

So we took him to unfamiliar parks by car, and took walks there. He was unfamiliar with the area, so he followed closer.

So we attached a harness and leash to him and he just walked with us.

He does sniff at things and tries to explore areas and under bushes…but for some reason he seems really worried about being left behind… so if we want him to catch up, we just walk faster and not look back and he will be at our heels again.

34

Missed edit window:
Also we tend to unleash him when no one’s around… He follows us regardless if he’s leashed or not… the leash is really there to comply with leash laws and keep him from being startled by joggers and dogs. If Im exploring a creek bed and there’s no one around we’ll unleash him.

He’s scared of dogs, and affected by joggers, bikers and other walkers… When other people come around he will stop and let them pass before moving on.

If dogs come around, I will move to stand between him and the approaching dog, or pick him up, depending if the dogs are leashed or not. I dont want him to get rushed or attacked.
He does best, and follows fastest in parks with trails. He’s not so good with parks with paved trails for bikers and joggers.

For some reason, he wont walk on the paved trails. This means that he’s more of a strictly park cat. We cant take him on walks around town or on sidewalks becasue there’s too many people and he doesnt walk well on sidewalks.

35

Please go tell your Dad that he is THE BEST.

We used to walk our cat on a leash to the local park, it was great when we lived on a quiet side street. A lot of people liked to come up and meet him. He was good about meandering while on the leash, even loosely guided meandering, but if we wanted to go somewhere with purpose or in a timely way, we’d have to pick him up and carry him.

Unfortunately when we moved to a busier street, the noise of the traffic bothered him so much it wasn’t even worth it to get him down and across the busy street to get over to the park.

36

My parents tried the harness thing.

The upshot was that all one had to do to get my parent’s cat to bolt under the furnace and not come out for a couple of hours was to put your hand on the knob of the drawer in which the harness was stored. :smiley:

37

Some cats will let you harness them, some cats will learn to let you harness them, and some cats will never like it.

I once saw a lady walk into a Duane Reade with a (leashed) cat walking on her shoulders. She also had a small dog (on the ground).

Also, this picture was in Monday’s New York Times.

38

All pet cats are indoors cats, until you let them out. They will come back. No leash needed.

39

Another Chicagoan here with an Abyssinian monster who enjoys going out. Oberon doesn’t have to be dragged along, but his intrepid Aby nature dictates that he explore every square inch of his immediate surroundings before proceeding, so progress is slow and methodical, but that’s okay … I’m not in any hurry when I take him out. We go out to a nearby park or field away from the dog paths and he gets to sniff around and take in the sights. Of course, if a cat absolutely refuses to move and needs to be dragged along, they’re obviously not cut out for it, but not every feline is a neurotic recluse; their personalities are extremely diverse and there are plenty of cats that will go for a walk without struggling, though the nature of the walk is different than it is with a dog and they will generally not cover nearly as much ground. Provided you start them out young enough and they take to it, they’ll get used to it just like anything else. It’s not at all a good idea to just let a cat out to roam free in an urban setting (the list of potential hazards is a mile long) but the harness gives an opportunity for an indoor cat to get some fresh air, exercise, a change in routine, without it getting into any danger. There is truth to the idea that all domestic cats are indoor cats, but I still think they should get out to see the world on a regular basis. I don’t see anything wrong or silly with walking a cat, especially in the city … sure it’s uncommon, but that’s what makes it different and fun. And in my experience, people have always thought it was neat to see a cat out exploring the world on a leash and will want to stop and take a look. I have no delusions that it’s the same kind of chick magnet as a puppy, but that isn’t the goal. It’s still girls who always stop to squee though. I have no doubt a lot of people think it’s stupid. And I can’t say I care. If the cat goes along with it, why not?

As suggested by some, a lot of cats will panic and hide, but mine doesn’t so long as I’m nearby; he’s just uncharacteristically codependent compared to the average cat. But he’s an Aby; they’re not exactly known for being standoffish, aloof, and independent. In a lot of ways, they act more like dogs than cats. If anything, he’ll run back to me if anything startles him rather than running off to hide. It’s not like we’re attached at the hip or anything (okay, maybe a little) but he doesn’t endeavor to wander off on his own. Even if he were to try running off, he wouldn’t get far … because he’s on a leash and harness.

That being said, I’m a little lost from some here saying that walking a cat can’t/won’t/didn’t work because the cat runs off or escapes … I’m naturally inclined to ask “isn’t that what the leash and harness are for?” If the answer to that question is “the cat escaped from the harness” then I’m sorry, the harness was not on correctly or secured properly.

40

What I see as the problem is cats don’t like to be out in the open. They like to hid in bushes and when they have to be out in the open they run. I notice cats in my area of Chicago they walk along the edges always thinking about what bush they can run to for sheltger if need be.

If there’s ground cover the cats naturally slink down and creep through it

But if you walk a cat it’s in the wide open and will feel vulnerable especially to birds. When I had a cat, if it even attempted (or any of the neighborhood cats) to go out into the open, the birds would start screeching and the robins, and blue jays especially would swoop down and dive bomb the cat