I actually have very dextrous feet, and I used to like to keep my feet free for picking things up off the floor, among other things. Why? Because I felt very helpless without my toes free. It's like having tape bound around your fingers if you're like me.
In fact, there was a time when it kind of freaked me out to not be able to feel the ground or floor that I was standing on. It was almost surreal to me to be basically numb, where I was accustomed to having sensation. I wondered how other people could even stand it.
In the past few years, I have found an alternative to going free-paw all the time, and that's simply wearing exclusively top-siders or any loafer that I can easily slip my feet out of. Whenever I'm at a coffee shop or any public place, I'll automatically slip my feet out of my shoes and tuck my feet up under me.
Why? Because people kept giving me grief over going bare-pawed all the time. Because I'd go into places where food was being served and find out there was some rule about it regarding sanitation. It just wasn't worth it to argue.
I also realized that, in human society, they tend to leave filth on the ground, and it's actually a thousand times filthier than any forest floor. It's the equivalent of putting on a hazmat suit, the way I look at it.
But, when I'm studying at a library late at night, I leave my shoes at the station where I'm studying. I don't think anything of it. I am so comfortable with myself about it, I don't think that most people notice.
On the other hand, one thing that you have to understand is that humans have been wearing footwear of some kind for thousands of years, and we have actually adapted, to a large extent, to wearing it in our natural environment. It is almost less natural, for some people, to go without footwear. They are literally evolved to actually have a need for it.
But I do feel more like my furry self barefoot.
Or bare in general, but that's for another conversation.
