Putting the harness on her was less difficult than I anticipated. If we're being perfectly honest, I probably struggled with it more than Pennie did. However, once the leash was hooked to the harness, she began to exhibit bizarre, yet hilarious, yet sad behavior. This included attempts to jump away from herself (which ended in a wall collision), the refusal to fully stand up (opting to flop from side to side as if the harness were far too heavy for her to even consider walking), and the bone-chilling eyes of a cat calculating revenge.
Eventually Pennie's desire to explore outweighed her inclination to murder me right then and there. The next thirty minutes was both woefully uneventful and the happiest moment of my life. Zach described it as "an incredible demonstration of human absurdity and torture." In our first attempt, Pennie managed to flounder herself about twenty feet from the back door, making sure to chew on every patch of grass along the way (which resulted in a few grass-laced hairballs later on). Day two culminated in Pennie clothes-lining herself after realizing she had wandered all the way to the front of the building and could no longer see the back door.
Based on her initial reaction, I was certain she would fight the harness every time. Luckily I have the most intelligent and beautiful cat in the entire world (don't try to convince me otherwise) and she has taken to the process quite well the past week. To limit trauma, I typically just sit with the harness in hand until she comes to me. It hasn't taken more than a minute or so each time, though she still has a mini panic attack once everything snaps in place.
You can look forward to a reasonable amount of updates as this exploration in cat walking (AKA my new favorite hobby) develops.
And for any haters, Pennie has this to say:
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