THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

My childhood cat, a black-and-white tuxedo, was an indoor-outdoor cat. We lived in a Victorian in a quiet Midwestern town on a tree-lined street free from excessive traffic. He had the run of the house, the yard, and the world across the garden wall. He was a great cat, an explorer, and even though I was the only cat person in the house when he arrived, as cats are wont to do, he endeared himself to the entire family.

He was good about returning home, but like most normal unfixed toms, he would sometimes disappear for days at a time. When he’d return, nonplussed by our attentions, he would rejoin his normal routine until the need hit him again to wander.

We loved that cat. At the time, our naive disregard for his welfare was typical in the community. Most of the cats in town were indoor-outdoor cats, like ours. Few spayed or neutered their cats and even fewer kept them trapped inside all day. And whenever the town toyed with extending its leash laws to include cats, owners extended their claws in defense of their cat’s independent nature, opining that it wasn’t natural to put a cat on a leash. They were meant to be free, after all.

And so it was.

But as their numbers ballooned and the number of cats in homes began to rival, and then surpass, the number of dogs, people began to look closer at the welfare of cats as well as their impact on the local wildlife populations.

Nearly all responsible people have their cats fixed by six months. Most responsible cat owners keep their cats indoors, but they sense something is missing. Some of us purchase cat trees and toys and gadgets to try to simulate the natural world for them. Others take things a step further and install climbing shelves and create cat super highways so their cats can exercise their need to climb. And those with the means and the desire close in patios and porches or create freestanding or attached catios to give their cats a safe taste of the outdoors.

Is this enough?

Not really. The problem with simulations is that they lack the element of surprise. They may trigger a response, even a heightened response, but even the most adept play toy is not a bird. Or a lizard. Or a squirrel. Except for the large yard with a cat fence installed, these well-meaning solutions help alleviate boredom and should be maintained even after you’ve trained your cat to walk on a leash. As good as they are, they stop short of providing cats with the stimulation they need to fully feel like part of the natural world. Once playtime is over, they find themselves looking out at the world through windows and screens rather than interacting directly.

So what if, like the dog, you took your cat time outside on walks through the neighborhood? What if your cat could explore the world, interact with it, and become a part of the wider world? What then?

Are you afraid that once your cat has had a taste of the world beyond the big door he’ll want more? And eventually he will eschew the couch for the flower bed and all will be lost?

That could happen, if you deny your cat regular access to the outdoors. For a while, you will want to take your cat out as frequently as possible, creating a regular routine. Unlike the dog, the reason for the outdoor trek is pure pleasure and enrichment. There are no fire hydrants to water, aerobic exercises to endure, or squirrels to tree.

Okay, your cat may engage in one or two of those things on occasion, but in most cases, it’s not the reason we walk our cats. Walking a cat is a purely pleasurable activity for both you and your cat. After half an hour or so, most cats will accept the return home, knowing another trip is forthcoming, and settle in for a nice nap.

Despite what you’ve been told, you can teach your cat to walk on a leash. If you’re lucky, your cat is already predisposed to walking, and the task will be relatively easy. For the rest of us, the journey is daunting but no less valuable. We’ll need to exercise patience and empathy and love reliably and consistently if we’re going to help our cat overcome his inherent fear of the leash. We’ll need to look within to see if we have what it takes.

Training a cat to walk on a leash will change him in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. But some things won’t change. Leash-trained cats still run the household, endear themselves to family members who stubbornly try to resist, and still benefit from their time with you.

During one of my post-writing meditation sessions, it hit me. Most people don’t think cats can be trained because they don’t need to be. Beyond getting them to use the litterbox, which comes naturally, and convincing your cat to use the scratching pole rather than the couch, most people don’t consider training their cats. Some don’t even believe they can learn their names.

Consider the puppy. An untrained dog can be a disaster; tearing up everything in his path, jumping, biting, and pulling so hard on his walks that his owner fears bodily harm.

Training a puppy takes time; time that people take because they must.

Ever taught a cat to “sit” on command? I can tell you, it doesn’t take any longer than teaching a dog. In fact, most things don’t take any longer, they’re just not necessary. So now that you know the truth, teaching your cat to walk on a leash should be something you consider. It will take time, and due to the differences between cats and dogs, a bit more patience. But it can be done. It’s time to rethink the way we approach cats and learning.

I’d like to end this section by stating, as concisely as I can, the five truths of cat walking. You’ll notice dogs come up a lot in these descriptions. That’s because no one doubts that dogs can be trained, even the stubborn ones. Keep these five truths in your mind, and even on the hardest training days you’ll find the courage to go on.

THE 5 TRUTHS OF CAT WALKING

1.   Cats are not dogs, but like dogs, they’re trainable.

2.   Training a dog takes time; so does training a cat.

3.   Dogs must be trained, cats require very little. This is why so many cat owners give up so quickly and decide their cat is untrainable.

4.   Cat fear is natural; it’s a survival tactic. Cat fear is not as detrimental as you may think, and some may be helpful. Experience can rewire your cat’s response to a number of fear-inducing stimuli, but it can take lots of repetition before that happens. Over time, your cat will habituate on a number of stimuli he initially finds terrifying. Cats learn.

5.   Cats, even the shy/fearful ones, want to go outside.

CAT WALKER: ANGELA AMERSON

ACADEMIC COORDINATOR, PBS MASTERPIECE BUFF, PROUD CANADIAN, AND CAT WALKER

Angela Amerson was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She currently shares her life with her husband David and two Singapura cats. Singapuras are one of the smallest pedigree cat breeds, clocking in at 5–8 pounds when full grown. But that doesn’t mean they’re pushovers. What they lack in size, they make up for in moxie. Amerson’s two Singapuras, Astro and his younger sister, Gidget, are living proof that good things often come in small packages.

At the time of the interview, Gidget was at the beginning of her cat-walking journey while her older brother, Astro, had become a pro. Astro was two years old.

EARLY DAYS

Astro came from a breeder in California who flew him to Angela. When Angela took him out of his carrier at the airport, he was wearing a harness. She clipped a leash on the 4-month-old kitten and took him on his first walk, right there in the airport.

She then took him to the vet, completed his kitten shots, and got a clean bill of health before embarking on the training in earnest. When she took him outside, she would usually take a toy—something on a stick that she could dangle before him to encourage him to continue when he got distracted. She made sure that every trip outside was fun and something he looked forward to. When it was time to return home, she would say “Let’s go home,” and when they reached their front porch she would give him a tasty treat. So now, when she tells Astro it’s time to go home, he turns and walks back home.

“Astro has brought so much joy to my life. He’s brought me more joy than I could ever give him.”

—Angela Amerson

Today, most of their walks are in their condo community. On some days, they walk more than two miles. “But not every day,” Amerson explains. “When he doesn’t want to walk we just hang out in the yard.”

TRAINING DAYS

Astro was one of those cats that took to walking on a leash easily and early. From the first day he arrived, he began walking and hasn’t stopped yet. Amerson’s training was more about fine-tuning than out-and-out teaching; she used toys and other rewards to reinforce the desired behaviors.

One area that most cat walkers must deal with is their cat’s fear of strangers. Even cats who don’t seem to mind meeting strangers on their own turf find them overwhelming when meeting them in the great outdoors. That’s not a problem for Astro.

“Astro loves people; he goes right up to them! In the summer it’s a lot of fun. Neighbors will come outside to see him as we walk through the neighborhood. He loves attention, loves people, and noises make him curious. When he hears a noise, he wants to see what it is.”

FOLLOWING THE LEADER

Amerson says that sometimes she leads and other times Astro takes the lead. If she has something in mind, like a trip to a butterfly garden, or when she doesn’t have time for a long leisurely walk, she guides him.

“When it’s time to go home or he seems to be getting tired, I ask him if he’s ready to go home. On the return home he generally keeps pace with me, but if a neighbor is out, he stops and wants to socialize. If we really must get home, I pick him up and carry him past distractions.”

In addition to their neighborhood walks, Amerson has taken him to the park. Fearing ticks and run-ins with total strangers and their pets, she doesn’t do that often, but she loves to watch him climb big trees in the park.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Amerson uses a clip-on harness with Astro. When on a walk she uses a standard cat leash. When he’s in the backyard and she wants to increase his range so he can chase insects and birds, she uses a much longer leash.

CAT-WALKING TIPS

When asked for tips on training a cat to walk on a leash, Amerson’s number one tip is patience. “Remember it’s for the cat, not the owner, and if the cat doesn’t want to do it, don’t force it, or they’ll never do it. Every time they see the harness and leash they’ll run and hide. Start as early as possible; put the harness on and let the cat walk around the house with the harness and leash dragging behind it. Also, make sure you look around to see what’s out there before you embark on your walk. Be safe and aware. You don’t want any tragedies.”

ZAZEN: THE WHY OF ZEN

“In zazen, we do not expect anything.

“Zazen is not a technique to achieve anything.

“It is much more natural.

“And yet, somehow the most natural thing is difficult to do.

“How come?

“Because we think.

“There is nothing wrong with thinking.

“Thinking is a very natural process, but we are so easily conditioned by our thinking and give too much value to it.”

—Maezumi Roshi, Zen Buddhist teacher

With cats, fear is a survival tactic and not nearly as bad as you might think. Depending on the cat, it could take days or years for it to let go of its fears and begin to really enjoy the outdoors while on leash. To help your cat with the transition, you need to find your place of patience and inner peace and inhabit that place during your cat-walking practice. If you’re anxious, impatient, or bored with the process, your negative energy will be transmitted to your cat.

You might already be there, but a lot of us aren’t. If you find yourself getting impatient or spending more time reading your phone than reading your cat, stop, reassess where your head is, and work on developing a more present attitude before proceeding further. Meditation can help here.

I’ve been meditating for nearly ten years. My own practice is an amalgam of what I’ve learned from my investigations and practices. It’s not Zen, it’s not Transcendental Meditation (TM), and it’s not rooted in religious or philosophical truths. But it contains elements of all these practices, and I couldn’t have found a level of peace without them.

While Zen is a good place to start your own personal journey, any type of meditation you choose will help you relate to your cat on a deeper, richer level. My intent is to give you the tools to take that first step down the path to regular meditation.

Given that quieting the mind is about as unnatural for us as walking on a leash is for cats, embarking on this journey will, by its very nature, increase your level of patience and empathy for what your cat is going through.

Learning to meditate is a journey, and like all such journeys there may be detours and false starts along the way. That’s okay. If this is something you want, eventually, you’ll get there. Don’t beat yourself up over it if it doesn’t progress as quickly or as smoothly as you hope; meditation is both maddeningly simple and excruciatingly difficult when you first start. The practice of zazen, or seated meditation, requires that you allow yourself to fumble along the way. In the beginning, you’ll spend most of your time redirecting your attention away from your thoughts and back to your breathing. That’s not only all right, it’s an integral part of the process. Most people feel they’re failing when the mind goes on its side trips, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Allow. Redirect. Refocus.

Over time, focusing on your breath will become second nature and you will no longer spend most of your time redirecting. Until that happens, accept that fact that each time you let go of a random thought, you’re exercising your meditation muscles.

So, what is Zen?

It has been said that there are as many answers as there are Zen masters. Zen is hard to describe. It’s something you do. Zen is a practice where you search for enlightenment from within rather than without. The answers to your questions are within you; they come from the same place as the questions.

These answers do not come from philosophizing, rational thought, or the study of scriptures. Zen is not a religion or a philosophy. Zen is difficult, if not impossible, to define with mere words. In his book Finding the Still Point, the late Zen master John Daido Loori described the practice of zazen:

“To practice zazen is to study the self. In its early stages, zazen has the appearance of what is normally called meditation. But we must understand that zazen is more than just meditation. It is not mere contemplation or introspection. It is not quieting the mind or focusing the mind. Zazen is sitting Zen—one aspect of Zen. There is also walking Zen, working Zen, laughing Zen, and crying Zen. Zen is a way of using one’s mind and living one’s life, and doing this with other people. No rule book has ever been written that can adequately describe Zen. You have to go very deep into yourself to find its foundation.”

And while Zen may not simply be meditation, the way you “go very deep” into yourself is. You must gain greater control over your mind through the practice of meditation. You must give up overthinking and getting bogged down by the incessant chatter of the mind, making room for the truth to arise just as easily and purely as the questions.

My own meditation practice has led me to believe that regular meditation reprograms the brain. It detoxifies thought, increases focus, and allows you to tackle life’s questions from a place of calm and emotional distance.

I have not experienced enlightenment.

But before enlightenment comes calm. Learning to let go, to be aware but not emotionally shackled, will put you on the road to enlightenment. In this book, I focus on the early stages of meditation; learning to let go of the discursive thoughts that distract you from your journey.

Meditation has helped me train my kittens to walk on a leash. I found that breathing, accepting, and turning off the clock were integral in being able to help them manage their fear. As a cat owner, you probably know that getting a cat to do something it doesn’t want to do is futile; you must provide your cat with positive alternatives if you are to succeed in changing his behavior. When it comes to access to the outdoors, I believe even the most fearful of cats wants this.

As parents and partners and family members, we’re used to telling each other what to do. It’s the most expeditious route to a desired outcome, so we tend to default to this behavior even when it’s not the most appropriate course of action.

It just feels right.

This doesn’t often work with cats. Cats are very much in tune with their needs, so telling a cat to do something it sees no value in doesn’t really work. Just like you, the cat has to find the answers for himself, the way forward from within. You are there to help your cat along the journey, not make him do what you want.

During your cat-walking practice, it’s imperative that you don’t let your own feelings of inadequacy, impatience, or anger at the slow pace of your cat’s progress color your interactions. As soon as you feel any of these things, stop, breathe, and find that place of calm your meditation practice affords.