Cat Walk

I saw a man walking his cat today. Driving down the street, I could see him on the sidewalk from afar with what appeared to be a small dog on the end of a leash. I hoped he had a good explanation for why he was out with this miniature mutt. Maybe he was house-sitting for his girlfriend and the petite pooch was hers, maybe he was doing a good deed for say his Great Aunt Sally who was recovering from a broken hip after she fell down in the shower, maybe he was convicted of some sort of weird misdemeanor, like shoplifting hotdogs, and appeared before one of those quirky judges with a terrific sense of irony, who sentenced him to two years probation as long as he agreed to rescue a wiener dog from the pound.

Because let’s agree to something up front … there’s something strange about a man owning a dog that can fit into a purse, unless of course the man owns a purse too and well, then, never mind, I don’t want to get started on men who own purses because to tell you the truth I’m just a little bit jealous and were it socially acceptable I would gladly put into a purse my Blackberry and my gum and my ChapStick and my wallet and my money clip and my spare change and my sunglasses and my GPS and my iPod and a bottle of water and maybe a bottle of aspirin and perhaps a book and sling it all over my shoulder, but that’s another story entirely. Let’s just agree that it’s not socially acceptable and leave my purse-carrying fantasies for some other time and move on.

Anyway, all my speculation about this diminutive dog went out the window as I got closer and looked out my car window and saw a dark gray, almost black tabby cat wagging it’s long tail (can a cat wag it’s tail? I guess it can) while caught up in some sort of harness contraption attached to the end of a leash. The harness was blue, royal blue and so was the leash. Slowing my car to a crawl, I turned my head to stare.

Yes, I know it’s not polite to stare but let’s be honest here, there’s a man walking a cat down the sidewalk. It’s like a teenager with a purple Mohawk and saucer-sized earrings hanging through his lobes or a slight woman with obvious double D breast implants who wears nothing but low-cut tops … no matter how they try and defend their right to individuality and the moral reasoning for doing what they did (and don’t get me wrong, I like purple hair and giant hooters as much as the next guy – maybe more) deep down, somewhere way deep down, they did what they did because they want people to stare at them.

So, with apologies to large-breasted skinny women (both the real and surgically enhanced variety) and to purple-haired, piercing-happy teens and to the man walking the cat, I slowed almost to a stop and stared.

He was on the opposite side of the street from where I was driving, about 25 or 30 feet away. He stopped walking and the cat was milling about on the sidewalk. Cat on a leash wandered over to some bushes and I couldn’t really tell for sure but my guess is that cat on a leash had stopped to smell the flowers. To his credit, the man holding the cat on a leash he didn’t look back at me looking at him, no dirty glares, no return stare telling me with his eyes to move along buddy, there’s nothing to see here.

In fact, it appeared that he had no idea that I was staring at him at all or if he did see me, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought about him and his cat on a leash, which now that I reflect upon it, is probably the best way to go through life … with your head held high, a cat on a leash, not paying any attention to the people who slow down on the street staring at you and wondering what the fuck is up with the guy on a sunny Sunday afternoon walking his cat on a leash? The cat sure didn’t seem to mind.