have a cat wquesti on...well where else would I post it ??

[davet]

Was walking sassy tonight and got tto thinking...whic in itself isc unusual...but has any one everr trained a cat to walk on a leash...Sassy almost woalks nice occaisionally (rarely) but is it difficult to rain a cat to walk on a leash or do they really have minds of thier own??? any ideas.

[MJ]

Many people have trained cats to walk on leashes. They are a little more willful in general than dogs, so they won't exactly walk perfectly by your side all the time... But it does work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaJk8SuZ5Oc

A good example of a lovely cat being walked on a leash.

One of my cats is partly trained to walk on a leash... I took him outside a few times, and he did all right, other than being very skittish in general. But it's been a very long time since then, and I'd have to start training him all over again if I wanted to do it any more. :P

Edit: There's a lot of good information out there about how to start training your cats for this too. What I started with was the very basic step; "get the cat to wear the harness indoors until they stop freaking the hell out about it". Hahaha.

[davet]

thanks,, we havn;t got a cat yet but we will be getting a young on soon and will stqart her out with getting to know sassy first.

[Phoebe's human]

I've never tried to train a cat to a leash but I know people who have, and it has worked for them.

It may depend on the cat. I suspect there are cats who just wouldn't accept a leash.

I also know of one who promptly wriggled out of the leash on one of her first walks--and went up a tree.

[kehorner]

I've taken Pat out on the harness a few times, because he's interested. (I'm sure you know to use a harness and not just a collar on the wriggly little things...) He won't take a walk on the leash. But he'll wander in circles around the front porch area while I stand there and follow him while holding the leash.

So I guess you can train a cat to use a harness and leash, the only problem is that most cats end up walking you, not the other way around.

[E's]

My amazing deaf cat, His Royal Highness Prince Xanth (April 1989 - October 2000) walked on lead like a dog. I did use a harness sometimes but could do with just the collar. When I picked up his leash, Xanth would run to the front door and paw at it, just as a dog would. I didn't get to walk him as much when we moved back to my Lakeview house, but during the year I had an apartment in Metairie by the levee of the 17th Street Canal, we walked on the levee track. Xanth had no fear of dogs or of anything else, but another tenant advised me I might be endangering the cat - she had seen people walking cathating dogs... so I stopped. BTW: This was on the western side of the Canal, a few blocks (less than a mile) down from where the eastern levee bank breached on on 29 August 2005, inundating the suburb of Lakeview and much more of the New Orleans side of this dividing line: My house, about 10 blocks due east of the breach, got over 11 feet of water which stayed like soured soup in a bowl for over 3 weeks... the western levee bank where dear Xanth and I once walked, did not breach, so there was little flooding on the Metairie side. The little container with Xanth's ashes was on top of a bookcase on the upstairs landing - it is here in Austin now, with dear `Eowyn's; we haven't decided yet whether or not these friends will go back to Lakeview, or wait to go with me to a Texas mountain top...