Is there a trick to cat jumping sideways?

I'm playing Okami and in "Inner Yoshpet" there's a pit you have to cross with catprints across the sides. I don't see a cat statue, and I've managed to stick to the wall sometimes, so I assume that this is an area of permanent catprints that I don't need to brush myself.

But I'm having no luck at all getting across this. I can make the first landing stick maybe 1/3 of the time, but it looks like you need to land 10 in a row to make it all the way across.

I think I must be missing something here, because it's completely out of proportion with the difficulty of the rest of the game so far. I've never had any puzzle or demon in Okami take more than 3 tries to figure out, and I've never had any trouble at all with sticking to any catprint wall.

Is there a trick to it? What's the rule about when exactly to hit the button, or which way to aim? I seem to miss the wall and do a double-jump, even if the camera is tilted so that I'm going 'into' the wall, and then either I can't stick to the wall after a double-jump, or I'm too far away and fall off. I have noticed that sometimes I'll stick to the wall well below where the catprints are: are they too high, or is the whole wall sticky? I'm stumped.

UPDATE: I made it past this area, but only after dying many times. I'm still curious if there's a trick to this, since it seems odd that this one part of a (mandatory) timed race is so much harder than any of the half-dozen-or-so 'bosses' I've faced so far. Or maybe I'm just really bad at video games.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there's no particular trick to this area beyond timing your jumps correctly.

Here's a walkthrough video showing someone going through that section - it does look as though the whole wall is a valid surface to stick to.