How to walk your cat on-leash so you can explore new places while traveling/ Van life with a cat

Good morning everyone. We are in this beautiful place around Tulalo Lake and we're going for a little walk with my cat as you can tell. And today I'm gonna go with you about how to walk your cat on leash. This was a lot of requests that I had for that. I know it's not gonna be for everyone this type of video. So if it's not sorry like the van life and all that good stuff gonna come back in the next video. But I just wanted to cover this because I know a lot of you want to travel with your cat. A lot of you want to learn how to walk your cat on leash. So I'm gonna give you my little tip. Kelly is the one that I train the most but two other cats Kiki and Harley that I also train once. I'm gonna explain everything. So we're just gonna go slowly back to the van and I'll show you how to start. Good girl. So Kelly seems to just want to stay outside. She doesn't really want to go to bed and I totally understand because we've been inside the van for a little while now because of the forest fire and the smoke and all that jazz. So I don't blame her to want to be outside right now. So first of all before I start I just want to say that I'm not a cat expert. Yes my name is the cat lady van but I'm not an expert in any mean. The only thing I can say is I used to be a dog trainer. So I took my experience as a dog trainer and put all those training into a cat. Yes you can train pretty much as much as a dog a cat. The cat Kiki where she was doing high five. She was spinning and she was she used to be scared of a little tunnel and she was going like in the tunnel and all that good jazz. I'm not gonna do that with my cat Kelly but yeah it was kind of to practice myself when I was a dog trainer. So I do have experience with cats and train them and like I said train two of my cats to walk on leash because we were doing a big trip to move from Squamish to Edmonton and I just wanted my cat to have a little stop and you know enjoy a little bit of travel. So I trained them a little bit. So I do have experience and I'm gonna make by the way another video about how to train your cat to enjoy a little bit more of the van or the car ride because like I said those two cats also I trained them when we did the big trip to move. I trained them so they had better experience if you want. So where to start? First of all I will say please please please know your cat and be super careful okay. It's got obviously a risk of putting your cat outside. I obviously don't want anything bad happen to your cat. So if your cat never never been outside or any of those cats who share their own shadow if you know what I mean. Obviously this may not work or this may take a long time and this may never be a cat who's gonna walk like Kelly you know like everywhere. So just be aware of that obviously if the younger they are better it is. So Kelly when I put her the harness the first time was when she was four years old but she was a very outdoor cat. She loved that's her favorite thing to go outside. So for her to put the harness and go on leash with and go on a walk with me she was like all right if I have to do that to go outside yeah let's do it. So it was not that hard but I'm gonna explain all the tips. So we're gonna go in the van because I think that's where it's gonna start the training inside your house or inside your van if you do travel with the cat. All right let's do this. Good girl. All right so as I mentioned everything start inside your van or inside your house. So go get a good harness. So this one I'm gonna hide I have my phone number on it. This one I purchased at Walmart is probably the worst harness that you can get. So Kelly is really good like even off leash so if she get out of her harness which she never did but if she get out I know I'm okay. The reason I also purchased this one which is a little bit better one. Hope the thing focus. So this one attached really like in the back there they cannot really get out and they have this little rope if you want that extends so if the cat see a squirrel something happens get like a little bungee cord if you want so it doesn't hurt them too much. So the reason why I don't use this one is because maybe because I didn't adjust very well which I'm gonna explain in a second but she doesn't seems to like be very free in it so this is why I don't use it. Go get a good harness and put it like inside your house on your cat without the leash without anything just the harness and you want like the first time to put it like really loose on your that your cat almost like don't really feel it and slowly adjust over a couple days. Adjust a little bit more tight the way it's supposed to be. Ask at your local pet store or to adjust usually you need like maybe a finger of space between but yeah you don't want it too loose you don't want it too tight because your cat's not gonna walk on it. If your cat doesn't walk with the harness most of the time it's because you didn't adjust the harness properly so like I said yeah start loose let your cat walk around inside your house give him treats praise him when you walk and all that and so eventually will feel really good about just the harness. So this is really the first step. The second step you want a leash so this leash was purchased at Walmart. I really like that leash. It is a warrior type of leash with a small hook so you want to try to find the smallest hook possible and be still strong that's the thing. You don't want something too big that's going to be heavy on your cat. They're going to feel it at the beginning they're going to walk a little bit down but yeah eventually they should like you know feel all right. But this yeah you want something strong and you want strong leash with a wire especially. Why? Because this is a big difference between walking a dog and a cat. A cat is going to climb trees but not all of your cats gonna climb in the trees but some so if you do have a cat that like to jump and all that make sure to have wire leash and even like if your cat's not like a huge fan of like jumping I still recommend the wire one because your cat's gonna walk like dog walk like in the trail usually fine. Cat like to be like in the bush and you know like so you don't want like your leash to broke and if it tied to like a branch or anything like this and especially like I said if you cat jump on trees and things like this make sure to have a wire leash. So your cat is fine with the hardest inside your home now it's time to introduce the leash so put the leash on and just follow your cat don't try to dictate what your cat's gonna do uh follow your cat inside your house if your cat won't lay down go beside it praise him lay down beside him uh just make sure that every step that's really important like when I was training a dog or a cat baby baby step um this is really like the key guys if you try to go too fast you're just gonna traumatize your cat and make things worse your cat's not gonna want to go outside cat's not gonna want to go on leash uh it's gonna have a bad feeling to this and you don't want that you want to have like the best experience and the more that you tried your best to give the best experience with like maybe give him like his food during the time he's got the harness and like praise him or pet or play with whatever your cats prefer um this will make like the experience way faster for your cat eventually uh because yeah if you go too fast you're gonna have to back down all the work that you've done you're gonna have to go back in like right at the beginning it's gonna take time to adjust like your cat's gonna have to almost forget that bad experience so yeah go very very slow okay so cat on leash inside if it takes like two weeks so your cat get used to it so be it do it if it takes a month whatever you know what i mean like just take your time so do it also like every day uh if you want the best experience the fastest one do it every day if you do it like once a week your cat's not gonna really remember what you learned the previous time so yeah do it often so all that been said your cat's good on with the harness your cat's been good with uh the leash uh it's time to eventually experience a little bit of the outside so um a lot of things here if your cat's already a dog cat that's gonna go way faster obviously if your cat never been outside yeah it's gonna be hard so if you do live in the park man uh you probably don't have the luxury just open the door and you have like a nice yard calm with no car with no distraction anything this is where you try to try to get that you know like if you do live in a house that has like super quiet or outdoor um yeah that's gonna go faster cats don't like car cats don't like usually like car or big noise so you want to go in the place super calm so if you live in the park man you can put the harness and the leash maybe in the hallway and just go for a little walk in the hallway that's gonna be a new environment and eventually uh you can watch my other video that i'm gonna make about like making your cat used to uh get in the car and you can bring him to like a super quiet park that you have close to your apartment so that would be my step if you want if you do have a house obviously slowly open the door and just follow your cat just praise your cat if you have to get those big those treats that your cat will do anything for it take them people want to see you that's a cat video so yeah make sure that your your cat is used to like uh all those steps you know you don't want to go really fast that's really the key guys and um so most cat don't like new environment that's just in the nature of the cat uh dog are a little bit more used to like you know like go in a car ride most of the cat most of the dogs already like it um so yeah just go slow guys um caddy um she was four years old when i put the harness first i didn't have the luxury of really training her and having the most time because we just jump into van life together um if we didn't know my ex-boyfriend was taking care of her and right when i was really looking for a van i got a phone call that my cat um was lost and i had to pick her up and he couldn't take care of her to take care of her anymore so i had to take care of her and yeah we jumped into van life together um so yeah i put the harness but she really our door cat so she's like all right whatever like she was walking a little bit like crooked and i just eventually like that didn't take that much time after a walk or two she was fine with the harness and i just followed her very long time uh for for a very long time i just followed her that was my key obviously like if something i knew that was danger or something that would scare her i would just slowly bring her to another place um a cat you can easily pick them up if they get a little bit scared um but yeah maybe you want to bring like i have a sweater or things like this because yeah your cat's gonna have claw um and really really we go to the best environment the first time make sure that's super super quiet the quietest place is the best um eventually you can bring your cat to other area so what i was doing when i was in squamish with her um i was going on one park for so for like almost a month that was her park and eventually i bring her to a second part and we stay there for maybe a two or three weeks and i bring her back to the first park and after that those two park were her park and i bring her eventually to another park and eventually she learned to enjoy several place because she was not like a huge fan of going like a lot of different place um like she is right now um because cats like to know the environment they know they like to know uh you know where danger is and just get used to their little environment so uh just go slow even right now um sometime caddy i just go to go walk and she's just gonna back up she's gonna be nope that's it i feel danger and i always respect that i never never never push her uh even sometime i travel i do a distance to find a quiet place and i'm gonna open the door and she's not gonna want to go outside because maybe a car pass by or maybe whatever some reason she doesn't want to go and i always respect that all right so i think it's good i'm just gonna recap what we cover if you do have question obviously in the comment i'm gonna try to help you as best as i can um so go slow start inside your van or inside your house uh preferably your house um go super slow follow your cat uh needs praise your cat along every little step if you can't get scared just you've been too far the best if you can find a place right beside your house right beside your van um to walk the cat so your cat if he gets scared i can run back into the van or the car or the your house i always praise my cat if she run back into my van because this is a safe place and i want to make sure if something happens she um get out of her harness that um she gonna go inside the van uh so also yeah make sure to adjust the harness properly uh go see a pet store or someone that can help you if you're not sure um because yeah cat can easily get out of those type of harness um some cat are very very good at it so yeah make sure to get a proper harness and go super slow um i hope that helped i tried to make as short as possible with a lot of information um and yeah just go slow guys i don't want you to see me and Kelly walk in and just be like oh it seems to be so much fun and i'm just gonna go and do that with my cat and not really thinking about the type of cat you have uh think about your cat think about where you're going uh and make sure that it's a good experience for both of you i don't want something bad happen and i'm gonna make a second video about um how to take care of um train your cat sorry to be inside a van inside a car so i hope you enjoy and i will see you soon