Guiding a group of 50 cat enthusiasts on a tour through Vancouver’s busy Mount Pleasant neighbourhood “is kind of like wrangling cats, which is a little ironic,” says Vancouver Cat Tour co-organizer Christine Hagemoen.
Ms. Hagemoen and fellow co-organizer Perri Lo, who walks her own cat around the neighbourhood, noticed that there were a lot of cats in different apartment buildings. After discovering the Toronto cat tour via social media and accessing their step-by-step how-to guide, the Vancouver Cat Tour was born.
The tour, which took place on a hot Sunday morning in August, took the crowd of cat lovers to visit 16 local felines, including Topper, described by his family as the “world’s tubbiest boy,” a Sphynx named Chicken who likes to wear fun shirts, and two cats named Mochi who live on the same block. Participants took care not to overwhelm the cats and kept their eyes open for bonus kitties spotted along the way, as volunteers guided the group across busy streets.
Christine Hagemoen addresses the tour group alongside Perri Lo, far right, a co-organizer of the cat excursions.
Ms. Hagemoen, who also leads her own historical walking tour, Mount Pleasant Stories, was the purr-fect person to lead the tour, as she told anecdotes about the neighbourhood while waiting for people to catch up or for cats and their owners to come down from their apartments.
The event concluded at Catoro Cafe, with the rescue cat café receiving a $490 donation, the proceeds from the $10 registration fee.
After the tour, when asked if she would organize another, Ms. Lo said, “We’ll take a little pause to regroup and yeah, we might do another. We definitely want to keep the cat energy going in the city.”