My cat the fitness buff

Recently I had the thought “I wonder what it would be like to take the cat to the gym.”

Why would I want to do such a thing, you ask? You’re probably thinking I’m a glutton for punishment. Perhaps. The reason I think about cats is the gym is that I wonder if that would stop the thunder.

Yes, I’m going to explain that.

My cat, like most felines, has two speeds. She is either sitting still as death in what I call The Loaf Position. Or she is running through the house fast enough to make you wonder if she will be the first cat to break the sound barrier.

And before you ask, no, there is not an in between speed. She is still until she is activated by some unseen force causing her to jerk her head up and FWOOOOSH! A calico blur goes whizzing by.

Unfortunately, even though we have a fairly large house, she only has so much room to run before she has to come to an abrupt stop. I believe her brakes are connected to her butt somehow, because at the end of every run she suddenly has to hike her leg up and lick her rear. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

All y’all cat owners know what I’m talking about.

Now, I’m not really much of a runner. But judging from my brief experiences in running, I’m guessing it’s frustrating to work up such brilliant speed and move your feet so hard that your steps sound like thunder only to have to stop abruptly and lick your own butt.

(NOTE: I am NOT suggesting that I have licked my own butt, nor do I have any desire to do so.)

So I think The Cat might enjoy being able to go to a gym and really get a good run going. Clearly, though, human gyms would not be sufficient. A cats-only space would be required.

The most important part of a kitty gym would be a large open space where cats could run to their hearts’ content. What I wonder, though, is if it would make more sense to have one REALLY BIG open space so there would be lots of room…or have several smaller open spaces so that each cat could have its own. The challenge I see with the big open space is I could imagine it leading to various cat fights. That and/or large herds of cats cautiously sniffing each other and/or the ground the other cats walked on.

Of course, even in a private running space, I could still see my cat using all her allotted time to just sniff everything and mark her territory.

Perhaps a better option would be to have a kitty obstacle course. There could be lots of cat trees and boxes for them to maneuver around and…wait…they wouldn’t do that. It would just be more sniffing, marking territory, and/or sitting in the boxes.

So really maybe I’d be better off trying to open a cat spa, where there’s lots of boxes they could jump in and just chill, free from the distractions of home. But that again raises the question of whether private spaces would be necessary to prevent cat fights.

Sorry, kitty. I think we’ll just stay at home for a bit while I figure this out. I’ll just have to keep enduring the thunder sounds. Maybe I’ll throw out a box once in a while just to keep things interesting.