I have been a very bad blogger this week, but I blame that mostly on the fact that my knitting looks more or less that same as it did last week, we’ve been eating out, and Ganymede has taken up a lot of time. Basically, I’m having a cat dilemma, and it goes like this: should we take our indoor cat on walks? I know that to the untrained eye this sounds silly, but seriously, the weather has been pretty nice in Toronto lately and Ganymede spends a lot of her time in the windows. We also took her out a few times in the fall, but then L left her leash in a friend’s car and we didn’t get it back until last week, when I made the (potential) mistake of taking her on an unsolicited walk. It was a nice day, I didn’t have to work, and she seemed happy. When L got home he was disappointed to have missed it, so we took her out again. She loved it.

The next day, though, the meowing started. Ganymede mostly make throaty purr-meow sorts of noises, so a full-on meow was unusual in and of itself. That it lasted for several hours and turned into a plaintive, miserable meowal was more than I could take, so out we went again. That was Thursday. On Friday, L was holding the door open for a friend and Ganymede got bold; she ran out the door. Just like that. Out the door and into the hallway and up the stairs (we live in an apartment, albeit one in a small building, so our front door doesn’t lead directly to freedom, which is ironically a contributing factor to why she isn’t an outdoor cat to begin with, but I digress). He got her back in without too much trouble. On Saturday, the meowling was again too much for me to handle, so out we went. Sunday was miserable, so there was no way we were walking. On Monday I took her out for a half hour and it looked like this:

We got back in and she immediately started crying and scratching at the door. Since then, we haven’t taken her out once (we’ve both been busier and less at home than usual) and, against all odds, her crying has more or less gone away. I attribute at least some of this to the fact that I’ve been giving her a lot of extra playtime and cuddling. Maybe the meows were attention seeking? Anyway, we’re now wondering if taking her out is a cruel tease, and it’s easier for her to deal with being an indoor cat if she remains indoors. Still, as people who both grew up with outdoor cats, it’s tough.

Have you had to deal with this? What did you do? She looks really cute in her collar and leash and seems happy outside, but the indoor meowing is killing my nerves, and selfishly, it’s easier not to deal with it at all. Am I terrible?