Hello Everyone!
As promised, here is the second part of James and Olympia's blog post: Documenting the Cat Walk!
Last week I went to join the two on one of their spring walks on the green behind James' house. It certainly didn't take long for Olympia to get her paws settled before she was off exploring. James explained that she is more confident along areas she has been to before, almost pulling at her lead to sniff the bush or climb the slightly raised mound by the back of the flats. Before long, she was the one walking us! When she was confident enough and there were no other people around, James let Olympia off her lead and let her explore more on her own like an outdoor cat would.
When she grew bored of the greenery, we decided to take a chance and see what Olympia thought of the beech. This was new territory for Olympia to investigate, with strong smells, different textures and open ground that lead to the sea. We knew that taking her down today would have been wise because when we looked over the bridge there weren't any dogs on the beach at this time. The beach was empty apart from a few photographers and they didn't seem to mind us being there.
We weren't there that long in the end. Olympia took one look at the sand under her paws and decided to have a wee like it was her own giant litter tray! We certainly had not expected her to connect the texture of sand to the texture of her kitty litter. Once she had done her business she decided to walk up the slope back onto the promenade where the smells were much more interesting and the ground more solid. She seemed to like it there a lot more and wanted to stay there for a long time investigating. She was very happy to be free from the lead and follow the trail up and down the slope in a zig-zag motion, sometimes pausing to go back again and re-sniff the wall.
After well over an hour we decided to head back to the house as it was beginning to look overcast and grey. However, Olympia had other ideas and once back on the lead decided to walk us the long way round going up and left back over the bridge rather than down and left past the green. When James walks Olympia, he doesn't direct her, he lets her do the decision making in where they should walk so that she is in control.
If she is not interested, she will often just plonk herself down on the ground and look up waiting for James to pick her up so she doesn't have to walk. On today's walk we did not see much of this, and when we did it was because she wanted to climb up on higher ground like a wall or bollard and once James picked her up and she was raised to that level she would reach out to climb it.
She was a bit of a pickle some of the time when she decided she wanted to explore under a bush or below a fence and suddenly James was stuck holding a tangled lead but this was easily fixed before an issue occurred. I certainly enjoyed our Sunday afternoon walk and think we managed to make the most of the unusually warm weather we experienced.
