Opinion | Yes | taking my cats for a walk
About13yearsago,myfiancéeandIstartedtogoforwalksinourneighborhood.Whenwe’dstepoutofthehouse,carsoftenlingeredattheintersectionoutfrontabitlongerthantheyshouldhave.Peoplewouldstopustoaskquestions.Andthepatronsofarestaurantacrossthestreetframedbylarge,plate-glasswindowswouldoccasionallyrunoutsideandshout,“It’syou—we’veheardaboutyou!”Perhapsthiswasn’tsosurprising.Wewerewalkingourcats,afterall.Onleashes.Weweren’ttryingtostartamovement.Andweweren’ttheonlypeopleinthecountrywhohadthecrazyideatobuya...
About 13 years ago, my fiancée and I started to go for walks in our neighborhood. When we’d step out of the house, cars often lingered at the intersection out front a bit longer than they should have. People would stop us to ask questions. And the patrons of a restaurant across the street framed by large, plate-glass windows would occasionally run outside and shout, “It’s you — we’ve heard about you!”
Perhaps this wasn’t so surprising. We were walking our cats, after all. On leashes.
We weren’t trying to start a movement. And we weren’t the only people in the country who had the crazy idea to buy a small dog harness, strap it onto a nonplused feline, and pray that the tens of millions of years of evolution[1] that separate dogs and cats would suddenly evaporate. We just wanted our two kittens — Jasper and Jezebel — to experience more of the world than our cramped 800-square-foot apartment...