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We also walk cats
Jun. 17th, 2002 10:52 pmIn the ongoing attempt to turn Denver into a cat that likes the outdoors, we've been slowly and steadily increading the amount of time we take her outside for. She still doesn't seem to actively like it, but she now puts up with it, bemusedly clinging on while she's carried downstairs, and them ambling around us on the patch of grass out the back of our flats for as short a period as she thinks she can get away with before meowing to be allowed to go home again.
In an attempt to make this more interesting for both her and us we took her up to the graveyard this evening. It's only about 100 yards up the hill from the house (on this map, go left about a cm, the "Pl" is in the edge of the graveyard), and is a lovely place to lie about in, as it's very green, usually very quiet and looks down on large chunks of the glacial flood plain that Stirling sits in. She coped fairly well except when cars passed us on the road, which frightened her (she's not a fan of loud noises at all, especially cars or banging) and seemed intrigued by the whole graveyard thang.
Erin and I walked ahead of her, keeping far enough ahead that she felt the impulse to catch up with us, which proved necessary because she doesn't like grass in the first place (concrete seems to be her surface of choice) and especially didn't like the uncut grass which came up to chest height on her. She gamely ambled from gravestone to gravestone, using them as islands in a sea of green, giving her a bit of a view and a respite from the tummy-tickling, until we'd gone for a few hundred yards, when she ran out of steam, so we sat down.
At this point we were visited by two magpies, who seemed a tad concerned that we'd brough a cat into their territory. They voiced this annoyance, allowing me to finally identify the bird-noise we occasionally get in our back yard. If you've not heard an unhappy magpie before, they sound a lot like those wooden clackers you get at football matches, a series of strange loud clicks emenating from their throats. They hopped around Denver, always staying 5-10 feet away, as she lazily watched them.
After about ten minutes of this, both she and we got bored of this, so we wandered back. Denver found a path, which she seemed much happier with, and joyfully led us back to the road at much higher speed than we'd arrived. Erin took her round to the back of the flats, which is where we've been taking her in and out, so that she could find her own way in, and she bounded up the back door, and then sprung up the stairs, a huge improvement over her early behaviour, which was mostly to shiver, meow piteously, and demand to be picked up and taken home right now.
It's a shame she's back off to Edinburgh in a month or so, as I suspect that Erin won't have a garden at all. But it's definitely doing good for her confidence. Was a nice walk too, even if I did feel strange walking a cat.
In an attempt to make this more interesting for both her and us we took her up to the graveyard this evening. It's only about 100 yards up the hill from the house (on this map, go left about a cm, the "Pl" is in the edge of the graveyard), and is a lovely place to lie about in, as it's very green, usually very quiet and looks down on large chunks of the glacial flood plain that Stirling sits in. She coped fairly well except when cars passed us on the road, which frightened her (she's not a fan of loud noises at all, especially cars or banging) and seemed intrigued by the whole graveyard thang.
Erin and I walked ahead of her, keeping far enough ahead that she felt the impulse to catch up with us, which proved necessary because she doesn't like grass in the first place (concrete seems to be her surface of choice) and especially didn't like the uncut grass which came up to chest height on her. She gamely ambled from gravestone to gravestone, using them as islands in a sea of green, giving her a bit of a view and a respite from the tummy-tickling, until we'd gone for a few hundred yards, when she ran out of steam, so we sat down.
At this point we were visited by two magpies, who seemed a tad concerned that we'd brough a cat into their territory. They voiced this annoyance, allowing me to finally identify the bird-noise we occasionally get in our back yard. If you've not heard an unhappy magpie before, they sound a lot like those wooden clackers you get at football matches, a series of strange loud clicks emenating from their throats. They hopped around Denver, always staying 5-10 feet away, as she lazily watched them.
After about ten minutes of this, both she and we got bored of this, so we wandered back. Denver found a path, which she seemed much happier with, and joyfully led us back to the road at much higher speed than we'd arrived. Erin took her round to the back of the flats, which is where we've been taking her in and out, so that she could find her own way in, and she bounded up the back door, and then sprung up the stairs, a huge improvement over her early behaviour, which was mostly to shiver, meow piteously, and demand to be picked up and taken home right now.
It's a shame she's back off to Edinburgh in a month or so, as I suspect that Erin won't have a garden at all. But it's definitely doing good for her confidence. Was a nice walk too, even if I did feel strange walking a cat.
