In which my dorkiness reaches new heights…

I have officially become the biggest dork in the universe.

Remember a couple weeks ago, when I wrote about my cat who was desperate to go outside? Well, he quit begging for a week or so, but he started again with a renewed vigor that I think surprised even him. He goes to the patio door in our living room, stands up on his hind feet and scratches and yowls and scratches and yowls and scratches and yowls to be let out. And when I say yowl, I mean YOWL. Deep, throaty, voluminous yowls that make me think HE thinks I'm some sort of prison warden trying to torture him. And he will carry this on for 30 minutes without stopping. He could probably go longer, but the 30 minute mark is when he breaks me and I give in.

Why can't I just let him out to roam free like a normal person would? The reasons are threefold:

1. We live really, really close to a very major Alberta highway, and I don't want my sweet kitty to get schmucked by a car. He's such a "leap before you look" kind of cat, I just don't want to take a chance and let him loose on his own.

2. The people in Airdrie have been known to leave poison out for cats who wander free and happen to wander into their yards and mess up their precious flowers.

3. The City of Airdrie is thinking about enacting a cat bylaw that will say that I CAN'T let my cat roam free even if I wanted to, so I don't want to let him get used to it and then take it away from him.

Which brings us to my aforementioned extreme dorkiness. Because I can't just let him roam free, I have resorted to taking my cat for a walk. Like a dog. With a harness and a leash and everything. There is a walking path that runs along our back yard, and we hit the path every night, stopping to sniff every blade of grass and eat every bug he can find. I always wait until it's dark, by the way, so my night owl cat gets to prowl and I don't have to run into very many people.

But I'm getting some pretty strange looks from the few people I do run into. On Saturday night, when we reached the highway pedestrian overpass, I noticed there were two boys, probably about 16 or 17 years old, standing around and I'm pretty sure smoking weed. And the first guy says, "Hey, I think that lady's walking her cat!" The second guy looks and goes, "NOOO!" And the first guy says, "Dude, she is! She's walking her cat!" Muffled laughter followed. That was the actual conversation. I'm not making this up.

So, if you see a crazy lady in Airdrie walking her cat, be kind. It's just me.