That's a picture of my cat running up a tree. If you could pull back the camera a bit, you'd see me standing there with my arm in the air, holding the leash and trying to look like I'm in charge.

I'm not in charge.

If you're someone who also enjoys not being in charge, you might want to try the glorious pastime that is walking a cat.

What Its Like to Walk a Cat

The last time I was out with my cat, I met my next door neighbor for the first time. He seemed surprised. "I've never seen anyone walk a cat before." I looked down to see my panicked cat leaping in every direction possible to get away from this man and the leash. As the neighbor reached out to shake hands with me, my cat chose a direction and bolted, pulling me out of the handshake. "Well, this is why," I said, waving goodbye.

If you want this kind of interaction to be part of your life, you must be tenacious. Cats don't want to go on walks with you and may have to be persuaded sternly into enjoying this activity. My cat, for instance, has come to love going outside with his human. What he doesn't like is the harness. Or the leash. Or that someone is holding it. But other than that, he loves every aspect of going for a walk.

How to Walk a Cat

The first step in taking a cat for a walk is often the last step for most people and also why no one has bothered to invent cat parks.

The majority of cats, when placed in a harness, will protest this indignity with passive resistance. Do not pepper spray them. This only makes your cat a martyr in the eyes of other cats and strengthens the resistance movement.

There are two ways to get a cat to love the harness. The first is patience. Introduce it to him slowly, over several weeks, preferably when he's a kitten. Make it into a toy and use it to play with him. Let him drag it around and feel like he's the boss of it. When you put it on the first time, don't expect him to go anywhere. Let him get used to the feeling. Keep trying until it's no big deal.

Or you can go the easy route, which is to sincerely want your cat to lie down and not move. Make that your sole motivation for putting on the harness. If you do this, your cat will have no choice but to disregard the harness and go for a walk with you, especially if you're in your pajamas and would rather do anything else.

That's what worked for me. As much as I'd like to take credit for my cat's willingness to march around on a leash, what really went down was that he was a former stray, coping poorly with becoming an inside cat. It was the middle of the night, and he was literally pounding on the windows with his paws. I live in a fiveplex and was pretty sure the neighbors were going to show up with torches and pitchforks to demand I release the prisoner. Then I remembered the magic harness in the closet, and it's effect on any cat that wore it. I imagined my cat lying immobile on the floor while everyone in the building slept peacefully. It was a brilliant and devious plan. It didn't work.

Instead, when placed in the harness, my cat was like, "Excellent! Does this mean we're going outside?" Faced with no other choice, we went on our first walk at 1:00 in the morning. There was snow on the ground, and I may have been wearing slippers. But that was the last time he pounded on the windows, so maybe it wasn't such a bad plan after all.

Cats Vs. Dogs

Regardless of how you get your cat to accept the harness, this is only the beginning. You may think that soon you will be riding your bike with your cat running alongside you, panting with happiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Do not get lulled into thinking that any animal on a leash will behave like a dog. A cat is not a dog, and if you treat him like a dog, you will find yourself being loudly berated in public by an angry, yowling creature, while people with actual dogs laugh at you.

There are a number of ways that cats don't behave like dogs, and it's best to be prepared for them before you go out.

First, dogs generally don't run up trees. A cat will run up a tree faster than you know what the hell happened. Also, I'm willing to bet that if a dog did this, he'd come down when you asked him. He would not hiss at your gentle, encouraging tugs on the leash. Nor would he settle in and take a nap while you wonder if there's any point to holding the leash anymore. Stay away from trees.

Dogs understand that walks are not really for their benefit, despite what they've been told. Walks are for human benefit. Dogs go where humans want to go, for as long as the human wants to go there, and they do it politely. If they slip up, humans shout, "Heel!" to remind them.

Cats don't understand this, and my cat in particular refuses to acknowledge it. We go where he wants to go for as long as he wants to go there, and if I slip up and forget, he hisses me into compliance. The leash allows him to show me all his favorite spots, so he tolerates that it restricts his movement to places where I can follow. But if I use it to suggest a new direction, or worse, that we go home, there's going to be a fight. I'd like to say I win these fights, but only if carrying a squirming, growling cat into the house is considered winning.

A few more things that cats will do that dogs don't. Refuse to stay on the sidewalk if a fence or other tall object is available.

Stop in the middle of the walk to take a leisurely bath.

Hide in the bushes from terrifying nice people who say, "What a cute kitty!"

My cat has also been known to try to ditch me by slipping through small openings or hopping over fences. On more than one occasion he has spent his entire walk lying on the ground eating grass.

Despite these things, walking a cat can be a rewarding experience -- once you accept that your presence isn't needed or, in most cases, desired. Plus, it's easy to do. Just decide that you really don't want to go outside, and let your cat do the rest.