This posting is in response to Kasmira’s postings about trying to leash train her kitty. I wanted to let her know that it can be done and describe a leash trained attack kitty I once knew. I don’t know this particular kitty’s name, so we’ll just call him Peter after The Peter the Kitty of MOBA fame.

When I was in middle school and later high school, my friend Aaron and I spent many happy hours wading up and down the small valley cut by Coal Creek, not far from Clark Creek. Coal Creek cuts through several hundred feet of soil and rock, most of it interesting varieties of sedimentary rock and deposited clays. The stream is currently cutting its way through a mud-grey sedimentary rock that is chock-a-block with prehistoric oyster fossils and long narrow turtella spiral shelled snail like the ones that still live there but 3-4 times larger. As the name suggests, there are also several thin layers of spongy and rather anemic coal which we mined with sticks and tried to burn in our campfires.

Where Stewart Creek joins with Coal Creek, there is a convenient series of small waterfalls and ramps that lead up to the level of the county road. Some of the pools cut by the waterfalls are up to five feet deep and only several feet in diameter. I know of at least one cave in the area. At any rate, the path of Stewart Creek leads the wader and explorer up from Coal Creek to the Coal Creek General Store where we would go to buy our Snickers bars and hot dogs.

Behind the store, there lived and old woman, who had a cat she kept on a leash. On several occasions we watched her from the brushy banks of the creek as she exercised her cat. It would turn when she turned and keep right by her side. She would also hook its lead line to a long clothesline and let it run sprints all up and down the yard. I don’t know how long it took to leash break the feline, but it can be done.

posted by Scott in Washington at 1:06 PM |