Local cat lovers recently came together to celebrate felines in a Kitchener neighborhood for the first-ever Catwalk in the region.
The Kitchener Catwalk was a one-day event on the afternoon of Sept. 30, 2024. Starting at Brubacher Green, participants followed a 1.5 km pre-planned route around the neighborhood to say ‘hi’ to neighbourhood cats and spot feline friends around the community.
While the event was free for anyone to attend, participants of the Catwalk had the opportunity to donate to the KW Humane Society and Kitchener Cat Rescue to support local felines.
Amy Neufeld and Laura McBride, co-organizers of the Kitchener Catwalk, said they had a number of cats sign up to make an appearance on their porches. At these pit stops along the route, participants could say hello, take pictures, and hear about the cat’s personality and character from the cat’s human.
“It’s all about celebrating cats and the cats that live among us—as they’re a part of our community too—and sharing their stories,” Neufeld said.
“There’s all these amazing pets and a lot of them are indoors, so you don’t see them or know about them. It was a chance to get a little peek behind the curtain and find out who is in these houses that we walk past every day,” she said.
In addition to the feline friends who had committed to being a part of the festivities, Neufeld explained that the hope was to have different cat sightings along the way, mimicking the experience of birdwatching.
For Neufeld and McBride, the inspiration behind organizing the Catwalk in Kitchener was twofold.
First, when they saw another community take part in a Catwalk, they knew right away this was something they wanted to host in their own neighborhood. But, more importantly, they were inspired by their own children.
“We all have cats that are very important people in our family,” Neufeld said. “Our kids are so passionate about cats, and we live in this really cat-rich area of town.”
Within Neufeld and McBride’s community, it is common to see the very well-known outdoor cats roaming the neighborhood.
“When our kids walk to school and we see a cat, everything stops and we have to see if we can pet the cat,” Neufeld said.
Even the indoor cats in this neighborhood are well known as they can be seen lounging in window perches or outside on porches.
“You see lots of cat condos in windows, people have built cat-ios on the outsides of their houses,” Neufeld said. “We have very well taken care of cats here.”
While the Cat Walk’s main goal was to celebrate local felines, the hope was also to create an opportunity for community connection.
“If you don’t have those opportunities to connect with people in a structured way, I think you lose out on a personality and you lose out on a sense of a place and how you as an individual fit into that place,” Neufeld said.
More importantly, Neufeld noted that events that bring the community together help to carve out the personality of a neighborhood.
“The community is so good at building out these events that do happen year after year,” Neufeld said. “All of those events really build out the personality of a place and you start to get really excited.”
With the Catwalk being low barrier for participants to attend, McBride and Neufeld also hope that the afternoon celebrating cats provides an opportunity to experience moments of joy and lightness.
“Everything is heavy a lot of the time, so it’s really good to have something that is wholesome and that there’s a simplicity to it as well…we’re just going to go look at cats, and that’s all you need to do.”
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