Pet Tales: Going camping with your cat?

Posted by cyoo
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 am

Cat and tent

This week’s Member Post comes from Melodie:

“My oldest cat, Jake, who is now 16, is leash trained. When he was younger I use to take him camping with me. Most of the campgrounds in the state of Georgia, at least back then, I guess they still do, allowed pets as long as they were on leashes. I would tie a rope between two trees and attach his retractable leash to this, or if there were no trees I would attach it to the top of the front of the tent, when we were just hanging out at the camp site. I only found one campground in North west Florida and it was a private camp ground. It was on a beach but it was on the sound so it had a barrier island between it and the open ocean, Jake liked walking on the beach there since the waves were not as high as they would have been on the open ocean, he loved the smells especially when the tide was out and he could go out further and smell what I been there when it was covered in water, fishy smells.

The state run campgrounds in Florida would not even let you through the gate with a pet due to the rate of abandoned animals, especially feral cat’s.

Jake loved camping and it was fun to take him camping with me. Other people would get a kick out of it because most of them said they had never seen a cat on a leash before. I can’t believe the number of people who think cat’s cannot be leash trained. Jake always had to have his covered litter box, he would not even pee on the ground. During the day I would sit his litter box out beside the tent and at night I would sit it back in the tent with us. The only time he was off his leash was at night when we were in the tent sleeping. In the mornings he knew he had to get his harness on first thing, before we went outside.
He never even tried unzipping the tent until one night we were camping at Lake Winford Scott, I was awakened by a storm in the distance and I realized that Jake was not in the tent with me and the bottem of the tent was unzipped. I could just imagine him going down to the lake and one of those alligators taking one bite and he would be gone. I was terrified. I dashed out of the tent and started looking and calling him. I looked and he was sitting under the picnic table staring back at me like “What’s the big deal” I took the bread ties and tied the 3 zippers together in the middle after that and he never got out of the tent again.

We don’t camp anymore, Jake has arthritis and I am afraid I would hurt him trying to put a harness on him. I have never tried taking any other cat camping, but then Jake has never been an ordinary cat.”

Do you go camping with your cats or dogs? What was your experience?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 am and is filed under Member Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

47 Responses to “Pet Tales: Going camping with your cat?”

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October 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

lex

i fuond a kitter in my dogs outdoor water boul he waz just hiding

ajcpets

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Pet Tales: Going camping with your cat?

47 Responses to “Pet Tales: Going camping with your cat?”

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