Hi all!

Sorry for the long post but I (31M) ran into a pretty unique situation (especially for me) last week and would love to hear thoughts/advice.

So I live in NYC and was walking to work last Thursday, when a cute girl walked out of a shop on my street with a little cat inside her purse. I’m definitely not a huge approach strangers person but I also have a cat so I commented on it and let her know I always have wanted to get her used to outside/take her out more. I actually have tried taking her out a good amount of times, she usually gets scared and also it’s weird standing at a park alone with a cat on a leash so I kind of just stopped. But she was super friendly and open when I told her, and gave me her cat’s instagram (lol). Later she DM’d me a bunch of “cat walk” people/groups and mentioned that we should go sometime.

So I just go to work and sometime in the afternoon she initiates like a concrete plan to go over the weekend. It’s something I wanted to do anyway and now a cute girl is offering to come help me so of course I’m down. We meet up, chat a bit and head to a nearby park. It was a lovely time, and she mentioned that it’s good to take her out often so we should do this again.

It’s honestly great news even if she wasn’t a cute girl, I need new social things to do and I love my cat. But now I’m in this weird place where like 90% of the conversation was cat-related. We had fun but seriously like I know her name, where she’s from (Czechia, cute accent!) and that she’s super into cats. There was a quick moment she mentioned she got the cat with her ex and kept him in the “divorce”, but don’t want to read too deep into anything

Anyway, we have another plan to meet up this weekend. I’m fine naturally meeting new people and can probably be a little flirty, but I also want to just keep this person around whether I want to date her or not! I would want to steer it in that direction though, so if anyone has tips to somewhat clear the “friend who I walk cats with” zone, please advise!

TD;DR: Met a girl on the street, we both like to take our cats outside, we met up that weekend at a park with our cats, but not really a date vibe. Looking for advice on how to keep that door open without shutting the friend/social part completely.