Walking Your Cat on a Leash, or "I can has leash?"

In My Humble Opinion
41

Hello,
Wow I must respond to this! Notice that this is my very first post…I have lurked for two years, at least, and have read EVERYTHING it seems (I will always mourn the loss of the all the stuff before ?the Great Diaspora?, I missed all that)
Anyway I am liberal, weird, and love cats and it is wonderfully bizarre how many of you all can relate to that. The humor and intelligence I can find on the Straight Dope is refreshing-it is like panning for gold. I read through the muck and then someone will write something so cleverly hilarious it takes my breath away.

Anyhow, I have a cat (Prince Albert von Heisenberg) that I got as a kitten and he took to the leash amazingly well.  Unless a bird or something similar flies right in front of him, I can totally walk him like a dog.  Seriously.  I don't walk him on streets, I am fortunate in that where I live has grounds with grass, trees, and trails.  My company put a picture of me walking him in the company newsletter.  I use a 30 ft. retractable leash (lightweight, for dogs) and a harness.  I started taking him outside when he was maybe 4 months old.  He has never been outside NOT on a leash so maybe he thinks thats how the "outside world" works.  One of the ways he is unique is that he is very attentive to me like a dog usually is.  My pet theory is that he is like this because he went through foster care, according to the Humane Society where I found him.   I found out that means he was hand raised, because his mother had died.  I think that made him really tame and convinced him that he IS a person.

Thanks for all the laughs in the last couple years.

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My cat Grady loves to go “walkie” on leash every day in the backyard. He comes down from upstairs when I call to him to go out and he cries when I pick him up to bring him back in.

He always wears a harness with his nametag since he won’t tolerate a collar, so it’s just clip and go.

43

I tried it for a short while when one of my cats showed signs of wanting to go out walking with me. He wouldn’t accept it at all. In the end it was easier to teach him to stand still, walk close or far from me as directed by signs, stand at the kerb, stay here etc than to put him through the trauma of a leash.