The news that one in six UK cat owners use them baffles me: who are all these cooperative, compliant cats trotting down the street beside their owners?
T
he news that almost one in six cat owners in the UK use a harness – if indeed you can call it newsworthy to anyone except cat people such as myself – brought forth a mix of emotions. As with anything that makes me think of my mad little cat, Mackerel, they were a cocktail of guilt, bafflement and love.
Let’s start with guilt. The charity Cats Protection has warned against the use of harnesses – as in, leads – because of how they cause cats undue stress by suppressing their flight response and making them feel trapped. I did not know this when I bought a harness for Mackerel, though I worked it out soon enough by her reaction, which was to play dead the second you put her in it. Now, I didn’t buy a harness without reservations, although rather shallowly it was my personal image that ultimately caused me to ditch it. Here is what I wrote in 2020 (from my book The Year of the Cat, which was all about how I adopted Mackerel during an intense period of maternal broodiness and pandemic-induced isolation):
“Sometimes I see myself from the outside: a childless, thirtysomething freelancer with a cat on a lead that won’t cooperate, and I can’t help but note that this is not how I pictured my life turning out.”
