ShiShi & Haku are a pair of fluffy catexplorers who enjoy saying hello to people, dogs and even horses!

ShiShi's favorite thing in the world is to chase after lizards (especially if she can climb a tree at the same time!)

Haku loves to sniff at everything outside, probably because he is wondering if there is anything to eat. He loves food and cuddles most of all!

What are their favourite foods? 

ShiShi and Haku both have a raw diet, but their favorite treat is to lick some of their meowma's yogurt.

How about their favourite toys?

ShiShi adores her catnip butterfly when she is in a playful mood (all the time!), and Haku thinks that ShiShi is his favorite toy to play with.

What kind of cat adventures do ShiShi and Haku go on? 

Sometimes we like to adventure just around our yard, or we go around to visit different pretty places in our neighborhood.

But we also just began going to a local park with hiking paths, and are planning on a visit to Oscar Scherer State Park next.

Tell us about your most memorable adventure

ShiShi's craziest adventure was only about a month ago. She touched noses with a strange horse, and wasn't even scared at all!

Haku loves to greet people of every age when he is out for a walk, and is even willing to say hello to most dogs.

Why did you decide to train ShiShi and Haku to be catexplorers?

We didn't begin to seriously train until about 7 months ago, when ShiShi was well over a year old, and Haku was about 2 1/2 years old.

Our end end goal is to be able to travel (hopefully internationally) and visit many places with our cats.

How did you train them?

It is a long hard process for ShiShi and Haku - not natural for them at all.

I do lots of gradual training, carefully expanding their limits each time. We still have a long way to go!

What has been the most rewarding part of having a catexplorer?

The more things that we do together, the more interesting places that we explore, the happier and more loving our cats are with us as well.

They always want extra big cuddles after visiting a new place, and feel like real members of our family.

What has been the hardest?

Training to ride in a pet backpack (I frontpack usually) has been incredibly hard!

They'd much rather be down and poking along, and sometimes I want to get somewhere a little bit faster!

In hindsight, what would you do differently?

I would have had them outside more at a younger age, and I definitely would have been training with a good backpack sooner.

I'd also start out with the great harnesses that we use now (Gooby X harness), instead of all the horrible ones that I tried first.

What advice would you give other humans training their catexplorers?

Start slow, and if that seems too much, figure out how to break the training into even smaller steps.

For instance, maybe leave a scary new harness near the treats dish for a week so that it is part of happy times.

I think that, it can be very intimidating to start training a cat to go outside if they don't respond well the first few times. It's good to know what to expect, and some ideas on how to counter those problems.

Also, it is easy to forget that cats can have amazing adventures in a back yard or local park - they don't have to go for a long hike if that isn't what the owner enjoys.

I love to encourage people to just get outside with their cats, no matter where they are.

Is there another catexplorer that inspires you?

@roxythe_kitty @remington_the_siberiancat

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