Yesterday was a busy day, with a lot of miles to cover. That means lots of boring hours for the Roadcat, who did a fair amount of arm napping. Since she was *such* a good girl, and since I'm looking at the possibility of having to go on the road without her, I decided that last night's kitten walk needed to be a really good one.

Fortunately I ran out of hours close to Phoenix, OR. The truck stop there is right next to a couple of very good kitty walk fields. And when I pulled in, our favorite parking stall on the edge closest the field was available! It's rare to find empty parking slots at all after 8:00 PM on a Friday night, but we did.

I knew it was time for the walk, too. The sun sank low enough for it to be truly dark about 8:00 PM while we were driving through Medford. Instead of relaxing in my arms or on the dash, Harri sat with her behind on my left leg and her front paws on the edge of the window. She sat there looking out the window and talking to me. We would go past a long stretch of empty field and she would sadly announce "Paw, look, over there - a kitty field! And there's no kitties in it. And it's darrrrrrrrrrk!" A minute or so later we passed a little park and again I heard "Paw, a park! With birdies in it! I could catch those birdies!"

When we did finally reach the truck stop and I got in position to back in, Harri got so excited that she paced from the window to the top of the steering column to the dash and back. The first thing I did when I parked was put Harri's kittying gear on her, then when I opened the door she was out the door ahead of me.

We got onto the sidewalk that divides the two kittying fields, and to my surprise she didn't veer off to either field. Instead she stuck to the sidewalk, went to the end of the street, and crossed to the other side. This put us on a sidewalk on the edge of a residential neighborhood, running along the back sides of some nice houses. We walked down the sidewalk until we came to a retaining wall that varied from about waist height to about shoulder height. I picked Harri up and put her on top of the wall (on the other side of the wall was a little garden/tree strip). Harri loved being up so high! She trotted along a couple feet ahead of me, sniffing all the trees and flowers, and would occasionally look over to reassure herself that she really was as high as her Paw's hips. At one point she made a meow that sounded exactly like she was saying "wow!".

We explored down the sidewalk to the next street, then turned around. We walked that same wall to the point where we originally joined it, then kept going down to the next street, crossed the street again, and came back down that sidewalk towards where we started. This sidewalk, though, bordered the bigger of the two kittying fields. About halfway down the field I saw Harri pounce on something, then swat it a few times, then pounce again. She had found a cricket! She would swat at it until it jumped, pounce on it, then swat it until it jumped again. After a few rounds of this the nasty old cricket stopped playing with her (and was looking kind of squashed). Harri trotted down the street a few paces, spotted another smaller cricket, and MUNCH! Just grabbed it in her teeth and had herself a cricket snack. Ewwww!

We then made our way into the field and played Hunting Zoomies for at least half an hour. Over all we spent over an hour and a half on our kitty walk. One of the best ones ever!

We're now in the Sacramento yard. If the drizzle lets up long enough I'm sure we'll do a couple of kitty walks here, too.

Copyright © Dan Mahoney
April 24, 2005