Cat walking's catching on: Why taking your feline pal for 'walkies' is beneficial

When she’s walking her pet Lola down the streets of her hometown of St Leonards on Sea, Leili Farzaneh will often notice passers-by doing a double-take. The 34-year-old former TV producer is used to it but admits that when she first starting cat walking, she was embarrassed about the reaction.

"I am a real introvert so the first few times, I was really nervous about what people would say," says Leili, who lives with partner Kevin White, 49, a former cameraman and Lola, a six-year-old Bengal.

"People would come up to me and I’d think: ‘Oh no! What are they going to ask?’ but what I’ve found is that people are intrigued. The first question they ask is usually: ‘Is that a cat?’ but when you start talking to them, they say that they wish they could do it with their cat or their mum’s cat. It’s a real conversation starter and you usually have to add half an hour onto your planned walk, just to answer all the questions."

While Britain’s dog-lovers have taken their four-legged friends out on their leads for decades, the idea of going ‘walkies’ with our feline pals seem rather eccentric.

But according to Leili – who has developed a successful business, Supakit, with Kevin as a result of her pet’s desire to go walking – the trend is growing. She estimates that around 50,000 cat owners around the UK now take their cats out for walks on a lead.

"It’s really growing in popularity," she says. "It was already huge in the US and Australia where cats are usually kept in the house and owners are reluctant to let them outside but we are getting more and more enquiries in the UK now. It’s really taking off."

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The original idea for Leili and Kevin’s business Supakit came in 2017 when Lola went missing from their previous home in South London.

"She had always refused to wear a collar so she had no ID and I felt so guilty about that," says Leili. "We walked the streets for days trying to desperately to find her but it was through the power of Twitter that we eventually tracked her down.

"A lady said her son had seen our cat and that he thought she was a stray. We went straight over and Lola raced up to our arms. She had wandered about half a mile from home, just beyond the point where we’d searched."

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"We realised we needed to put some ID on her. A vet had recommended that we buy her some natural material strips to play with and when I noticed that she loved playing with the leather ones in particular, I made a leather collar with some ID and Lola didn’t seem to mind it as much as the plastic ones I’d try to use before. I started making them and selling them on Etsy and it was at that point that customers in America and Australia stared asking if we made harnesses too.

"I’d never heard of cat-walking before. It sounded crazy. But we thought we’d develop a harness and it was really well received. Before we knew it, it wasn’t only international customers asking for them but British ones too."

While cats are notoriously independent and many of might balk at the thought of harnessing them, vet Dr Alex Avery says that the practice can benefit the animals

"There can be lost of barriers to letting cats outside to exercise, such as fear of them bring knocked down on the road or lost," he says. "Yet if a cat is always indoors, it’s often not being given the necessary stimulation to lead a fulfilling life, which can lead to pent up frustrations and stress, as well as medical conditions such as urinary tract disease, over grooming and obesity. Over 60 per cent of cats worldwide are said to be overweight. In addition to the physical benefits of getting more exercise, walking your cat using a harness can be beneficial to their mental wellbeing too."

Leili and Kevin now run an online academy teaching owners how to harness their cats in comfort so the animal enjoys the experience to the max. Leili thinks the lockdown of the last two years have made us more in tune with our cats.

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"We spent more time with our pets and probably noticed how bored our cats could be when they didn’t go anywhere," she says.

But she warns that while the cats might love the experience, the owner needs to be patient. "It’s not like taking a dog out where you think: ‘I’ll nip to the shops, buy a paper and get a coffee and the dog can come with me," she says.

"Kevin and I take Lola out once or twice a week and she always dictates where we go or what we do. Often that means standing around for 10 minutes while she has a good sniff of some dustbins! But as long as she’s happy and we know she’s safe, we don’t mind."