http://www.hometownlife.com/article/20090419/NEWS10/904190519/1027
Catwalk: Feline follows owner on nightly excursions
Many Livonia residents walk their dogs.
But Lisa McLeod walks her cat — without a leash.
The black and white-spotted feline follows McLeod all around their Hix-Schoolcraft neighborhood. If a dog being walked on a leash is about to pass by on the sidewalk, McLeod warns Kiewie and she lies down on a driveway, out of the dog's reach.
“People cannot believe I'm walking my cat,” she said of the looks she gets from neighbors and passersby.
Next-door neighbor Dave Thomas said he and his wife, Sue, get a kick out of watching Kiewie follow McLeod. “It's pretty funny,” Thomas said.
Thomas said the cat looks both ways before crossing the street, turning her head left and right. “It's really something,” he said.
Kiewie also protects McLeod's younger cat, Tiger, from cars. One day Tiger got too close to the road and Kiewie ran after her and chased her back to the house, McLeod said.
McLeod's sister, Jackie Schwalm of Milford, e-mailed the Observer about Kiewie.
She said the cat seems to understand what her sister is saying.
“Once a family was leaving their house in their car and the mother asked my sister, ‘Are you walking your cat?'” she said. “My sister said yes. Then her children in the car started barking and my sister looked at her cat and said, “It's OK. They are only joking,” and the cat looked at my sister and proceeded to walk by the car.”
McLeod said the cat, a 9- or 10-year-old stray they took in years ago while living in Redford, started walking with her last summer.
McLeod had stopped smoking and started walking. The cat began to follow her and each time, she would take it a couple houses farther.
“Now she walks anywhere I go,” she said.