Leon the tabby is having a blast hiking in the snowy Polish mountains. When I asked how far this cat could actually walk in the snow, Malgorzata relayed my question to Elzbieta, Leon’s staff, and I have this answer:
Leon walked yesterday about 6 km. It took 1.5 hours. Then he demanded to be taken up.
That is amazing; I know of no other cat that would walk 6 km on a leash in the snow. And when Leon is “taken up”, he has a special compartment in Elzbieta’s backpack that is covered with a net so that he can see and breathe. Here’s his position in the backpack (I’m not sure if it’s worn in the front), with the net removed for better display of Leon. This picture was taken at my request:
Here are three more pictures of Leon’s Big Adventure, with the first having a monologue:
Leon: Now to the right and there is another kilometer to the hostel. Somebody has to be in charge of this expedition.
Thanks to Malgorzata for acting as an intermediary in Poland!
Leon is quite the endurance athlete!
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What a fabulous moggy!
Leon is fantastic!
He’s a beautiful boy.
🐾🐾
What a fantastic cat who has great staff!
My Watson would walk quite well without a leash. He wasn’t one for long walks though, when he’s had enough, he’d yowl once or twice, and if I didn’t get the message he’d bite my ankles until I headed home.
6 km is one thing. Walking on a leash is another. Doing anything in the icy cold of a wintery Polish mountaintop is quite another. Putting all three together is beyond impressive! How did he not get frostbite?
Yes, I was wondering that, too!
I’m impressed. I don’t think Baihu has ever walked quite that much on a single hike in the desert. We’ve gone on longer hikes, but he rides a lot.
The most Baihu has done was a few weeks ago when we hiked the Holbert trail in Phoenix South Mountain Park, about 2.5 miles from the trailhead all the way up to Dobbins Lookout (the best valley-wide lookout there is) and back. He walked a fair amount of the way up and then basically the whole way back and impressed me mightily.
The temperature problem, of course, was the opposite of Leon’s…every ten or fifteen minute or so, I had to give Baihu’s coat a good soaking with the icewater from my Camelbak to keep him from panting….
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I had wild ranging tomcats at one time. They had very muscular legs, for instance a prominent biceps on their front legs. Their gait when disappearing in the meadow was quite different from the steps the females use for short walks: the tomcats went with a springy quite fast trot, clearly a long distance trot.The females use step or short distance gallops to catch up with me.
Lovely scenery – are these mtns down on the southern border or more in the interior?
Part “cat?”