IRIS THE TABBY GIRL OF VENICE MESTRE

By Francesco

(Venice Mestre, Italy)  I am Francesco from Mestre, and this is my Iris.

Since many of you have asked me for details on how to try to manage and lead a cat on a leash, I hope to do something you like with these short videos.

So Iris is a female, apparently of a common European cat, also commonly called “tabby”; she has an extremely regular and homogeneous tabby coat that made many people think she belonged to some more particular breed, let’s say. Iris is a stray foundling; therefore, it was not possible to establish the identity and breed of her parents.

Iris was born in March 2023, and I regularly adopted her from the ENPA volunteers, filling out all the relevant adoption forms, in May of the same year, so when she was about two months old and weighed about 200 grams. Subsequently, she had general medical check-ups, received all the vaccinations required by law, was sterilized at about 7-8 months of age and also had a subcutaneous microchip installed, which is why she is registered in the national registry. Iris immediately got used to the litter box and immediately showed exuberant, extremely dynamic behavior at home, dotted with ambushes and bites towards my ankles and hands, a real Tasmanian devil.

After about 3 months, when she was therefore about 5-6 months old, and when her body size allowed it, I tried to make her wear the harness and I must say that Iris accepted it well from the start, without ever complaining and without changing her behavior, also because she was already agitated on her own from before.

I proceeded step by step, but I must say that everything was quite easy, then we quickly moved on to the leash and to short walks outside, in the courtyard of our house.

It should be noted that, right from the start, Iris had been accustomed to travelling by car in the rigid cage carrier for weekends out of town or to go to my parents’ house, who live a stone’s throw from me.

Then we expanded the range of our walks, so to speak, going to the public gardens of Via Einaudi in Mestr, where we began to socialize with many people, with or without pets in tow. At the beginning, I always used the rigid cag, which, however, was quite uncomfortable when transporting it fully loaded or by bicycle. Thanks to my friend Jasmine, I discovered the more comfortable backpack, which, for short trips, is easier to use and, by placing it on the chest rather than on the back, allows the animal to IRIS