Adventures in Buddy Strolling (A Special Birthday Double-Header!)

It's a good thing we live in Asheville, and particularly in West Asheville.  Otherwise, I'm pretty sure our neighbors would have already had us committed.  As it stands, living here, people barely bat an eye when you do wacky, eccentric things.  Like take your Siamese cat for a walk in a Buddy Stroller.  

Otto had a rough day yesterday (see the previous post if you're interested in the details) so as a special treat, we took him on a long walk up to Haywood Road in his Buddy Stroller.  The Buddy Stroller is a specially designed stroller just for cats and dogs that has a zip-up compartment where the cat(s) or dog(s) can sit in relative comfort and observe the world without threat of other animals or without being able to run away.  Otto and Wanda mostly like it, but they have their doubts.  We had to run an errand up to Haywood, and it had turned into such a nice day that we thought Otto might enjoy a walk.  That turned out to be only mostly true.  

I think for the most part, he did like it.  He yowled every few seconds, but sometimes it's hard to tell when that's a distress sound and when he's just reminding you he's there.  It was an uneventful trip, except for when we got to our destination and Sean stuck his finger in to give Otto some reassurance that all was well.  When he did, the crappy plastic zipper failed, opening a big hole in the nice safe Buddy Stroller.  I emerged from Beauty Parade (our destination) to find Sean desperately trying to mend the zipper rift on busy Haywood Road.  I tried for a while to mend it too, but then we just haphazardly fixed it and decided to head back home.  Quickly.

Luckily, Otto went back to hunkering down as soon as the stroller started moving again, so he wasn't putting too much strain on the defective zipper.  He even quieted down for a bit.  We got a few looks from people, but most of them were positive.  We had a few big smiles, and one lady said to her toddler daughter, "look what they've got in their stroller, honey!"  I think we might have made a few people's day.  

We got home, opened up the broken Buddy Stroller, and a peculiar thing happened.  Otto didn't want to get out.  He purred and purred, and kept rubbing his face on the sides of the stroller.  When I put my hand in there, he rubbed his face on that.  But Otto was content to stay in the Buddy Stroller, just in case the old girl had one more ride in her.  Frankly, Big Buddy and Big Buddy Girl had had about as much stress as they could handle, so Otto was out of luck.  But one of these days, sometime soon, the Buddy Stroller will set out on another voyage. 

Maybe next time, Wanda will play Captain and Otto can enjoy the luxury of just being First Mate.