I really thought it was going to be a normal walk in the wash.
It was an afternoon in what Southern Arizona generously calls winter. No snow, no frost — just slightly cooler air and the same desert sun doing what it always does. Cheeto had his harness on, tail up, leading the way like he always does.
Walking a wash is its own thing. It's not a trail. The ground is soft and shifty, every step has a grab and pull to it, like climbing stairs that don't want to let you go. You sink just enough with each footfall to feel it in your legs by the time you're done. I've walked enough washes that I don't think about it anymore, but it's never actually easy.
That afternoon it was quiet. Just the crunch and give of the ground underfoot and Cheeto investigating whatever needed investigating.
And then he spooked. Not the little flicker of cat caution he gets when something rustles in the brush. Truly spooked — running hard enough that I had to run with him to keep the flexilead from snapping taut and hurting him. Running through wash ground, if you've never tried it, is its own adventure.
I didn't even know what we were running from.
I swung the backpack off my back and around to my front, loaded him in mid-stride, and then did something that probably wasn't smart — I walked toward whatever had sent him flying.
Javelina. A whole herd of them.
If you're not from the Sonoran Desert, javelinas look like small wild pigs and act like they own everything. A herd in their territory is not something you debate with. I turned around and walked the other direction without another thought.
What got me later was that I never smelled them. Javelinas have a distinctive musk — you usually know before you see. But the trash out there must have been bad enough to mask them entirely.
Cheeto knew anyway.
His nose did what mine couldn't. He read that situation before I had a single piece of information and made the only reasonable call. We are leaving right now. No debate. I just had to trust him and keep up.
That's the thing about hiking with a cat who actually knows the trail. He's not the one you protect from the desert. He's part of how you read it.