I once believed Diego needed a hobby.
This was in Darwin, where I had somehow looked at my nervous British Shorthair, looked at the heat, looked at the CBD, and concluded that what this situation lacked was a leash.
The idea did not seem ridiculous at the time. That is important. Truly terrible ideas rarely arrive wearing novelty glasses and carrying a small flag that says terrible idea. They tend to turn up dressed as self-improvement.
I wanted to give Diego enrichment. A little fresh air. A different view. Perhaps we would become one of those suspiciously serene cat-and-human duos you see online, wandering through nature while the cat gazes wisely at a mountain.
Instead, I ended up near Mitchell Street, being attacked by ants in a memorial park while Diego hid beneath a parked car in roughly 40-degree heat for about 40 minutes.
This is the story of why walking my cat is a never again.
The plan was offensively reasonable
Diego is a blue-grey British Shorthair with a round face, a serious expression and the emotional availability of a regional bank manager. He is beautiful. He is independent. He enjoys affection approximately once a week, usually on an appointment-only basis.
He is also cautious. New people are suspicious. Sudden changes require internal review. His preferred adventures involve food appearing in a room where food was not previously available.
None of this stopped me.
I had a harness. I had a leash. Diego had, at some point, allowed both to touch his body without immediately becoming vapour. In my mind, this amounted to a signed consent form.
So out we went.
The trouble with calling something a “walk” is that the word quietly imports a dog. Dogs often understand the basic proposal: we leave together, inspect the neighbourhood, urinate on selected infrastructure, then return. A cat may hear a completely different proposal: I will remove you from everything familiar, attach you to a string, and introduce traffic.
Diego did not want a walk. Diego wanted an exit strategy.
Then the harness became an empty garment
At some point near Mitchell Street, around a memorial park in Darwin's CBD, the outing stopped being enrichment and became an incident.
Diego wriggled out of the harness.
If you have never watched a frightened cat reverse-engineer freedom, it is difficult to explain the speed. One moment you are holding a leash attached to your pet. The next, you are holding a leash attached to a small item of clothing, and your pet has entered the local transport network.
He went under a car.
Not beside the car. Not somewhere I could reach with the calm authority I had imagined bringing to cat ownership. Properly underneath it, in the shade, beyond my hands, conducting no negotiations.
Darwin was doing what Darwin does. It was brutally hot. The ground felt hot. The air felt hot. The metal above Diego was hot. I was trying not to panic because panic is famously reassuring to cats, while also becoming increasingly aware that ants had found me.
I remember them as fire ants. I can say with confidence that they were ants, they were biting me, and their contribution to the rescue operation was poor.
Forty minutes under a car
For about 40 minutes, Diego stayed under that car.
Forty minutes is not a long time when you are watching a film. It is an archaeological era when your nervous cat is loose beneath somebody else's vehicle in extreme heat.
Every possible ending began auditioning in my head. The driver would return. Diego would bolt into traffic. He would overheat. I would have to explain that I had transported an indoor British Shorthair into central Darwin because I thought he needed culture.
I crouched. I coaxed. I tried to look non-threatening while sweating, swearing and being eaten alive from the ankles down. Diego looked back with the expression of a cat who had correctly identified the author of every current problem.
Eventually, I got him back.
There was no cinematic reunion. No grateful leap into my arms. Just relief, adrenaline and the immediate understanding that our hiking era had concluded.
The mistake was not the leash
It would be convenient to finish here with a universal rule: never walk a cat. It would also be wrong.
Some cats genuinely enjoy controlled outdoor access. The Feline Veterinary Medical Association includes harness-and-leash outings among the ways an individual cat may safely experience the outdoors. The important word is individual.
RSPCA Australia takes a more cautious position. It generally does not recommend walking cats because unfamiliar scents, dogs, vehicles, loud noises and the loss of choice can make an outing stressful. It also warns that a frightened cat may run, hide or try to escape. Reading that after the fact felt less like education and more like receiving the minutes from a meeting I had already attended.
Both positions point to the same underlying issue: a leash does not turn a cat into a small dog. Cats depend heavily on familiarity, safe places and control over how close they get to perceived threats. A public space can remove all three at once.
My mistake was not wanting to enrich Diego's life. It was deciding what enrichment should look like before asking, through his behaviour, whether he agreed.
A cat walk is not a small dog walk
For many cats, home is not merely where they sleep. It is a carefully mapped system of scent, routes, lookout points, hiding places and predictable sounds. Take them outside that map and the environment can become a wall of information.
A passing dog is not background colour. A motorcycle is not atmosphere. A stranger approaching with the perfectly innocent sentence “Oh, is that a cat?” may be the final item in a sensory spreadsheet already flashing red.
Diego was not being difficult. He was frightened, and he solved that problem like a cat: escape first, find cover, wait for the world to become less impossible.
What I should have done
If I had understood then what I understand now, the process would have looked painfully boring. That is usually a good sign in animal training.
- Start with the individual cat. Confidence, curiosity and recovery from small surprises matter more than how photogenic the idea appears.
- Use a properly fitted cat harness. Not a collar, not a loose dog harness, and not a setup tested only while the cat is stationary.
- Build positive associations indoors. The harness should predict treats, play or calm exploration, not immediate transportation into chaos.
- Increase difficulty gradually. A secure yard is a very different proposition from a public park or CBD street.
- Let the cat lead. The goal is not distance. It is comfortable investigation with a reliable path back to safety.
- Prepare for failure. Current microchip details, vaccinations, parasite protection and a realistic escape plan are not optional extras.
- Respect the weather. Cats can develop heatstroke. Panting, drooling, weakness, vomiting or collapse are emergencies, not signs to finish the lap.
Most importantly, I should have stopped treating progress as a one-way staircase. A cat can be comfortable at one stage and unhappy at the next. Going backwards is not failure. It is listening.
The enrichment Diego actually wanted
The embarrassing part is that Diego never submitted a request for urban exploration.
Cats can satisfy their need for novelty and natural behaviour without being marched past a pub. Vertical space, hiding places, food puzzles, scent exploration, short hunting-style play sessions and access to a secure yard or enclosure can all offer challenge while preserving choice.
That last part matters to me more now. I want my animals to have interesting lives, but “interesting” cannot simply mean a story I would enjoy telling. It has to feel worthwhile from their end too.
Diego's ideal enrichment remains strongly food-adjacent. He has never once escaped a snack.
Would I ever walk another cat?
Maybe, if the cat repeatedly showed me that it wanted to explore, the training was gradual, the location was quiet and controlled, and I had taken the risks seriously.
Would I walk Diego again?
Absolutely not.
This is not a punishment or a declaration that he failed. Diego communicated his position with unusual clarity. My job was to update the plan.
We often talk about good pet ownership as doing more: more experiences, more stimulation, more products, more ambitious routines. Sometimes good ownership is admitting that the lovely idea in your head has become a terrible day for the animal in front of you.
Diego and I now enjoy a more traditional arrangement. He stays home. I do not chase him beneath vehicles. Ants are not invited.
Diego's final review
Harness comfort: one star.
Darwin weather: no stars.
Memorial park: insufficient cover, except for the car.
Human guide: poorly prepared but visibly remorseful.
Likelihood of returning: never again.
