Deety's constitutional

Anyone who's visited the doublewide at the cat sanctuary will have come across Deety -- he can always be found on his shelf in the laundry room.

Once in a very rare while Deety will come down to the floor (lured down by a laser pointer, perhaps), but he soon becomes agitated and needs to be helped back up to his shelf.

He doesn't like to be picked up, so the help involves moving this set up steps over to his shelf so he can climb up on his own. This he's quite happy to do, and he knows the routine so well that he doesn't even wait for the steps to be set down on the floor properly before he's scooting up them to the safety of his tiny kingdom.

More than a few of us who've witnessed Deety's regular refusal to move from his place (and his seeming inability to jump back up to it on his own in the event he does come down) have wondered how it is that his muscles don't atrophy to the point that he couldn't leave his perch if he wanted to.

It turns out that med staff member Catherine regularly takes Deety for some exercise. She brings him all the way to the end of the path by the sanctuary's back fence, has him come back to the doublewide on his own steam, then repeats the process. She stays close by him throughout the walk to make sure other cats don't bother him. Carol tells me Deety was declawed on all four paws at a young age, so it's no wonder he's not so comfortable around other cats. Fortunately, he's got RAPS staff to keep him safe... and to make sure he gets at least a little exercise to keep him healthy.