Cats find humans very trainable. They have perfect timing, persistence and consistency.
We certainly need to take a leaf out of their book and look at the successful strategies our feline
friends adopt to get exactly what they want from us! Forewarned is forearmed – many cats are
making their owners miserable by their tyranny. At the Cat Clinic, we rather admire the feline
ingenuity, but now we are going to give the game away, so humans can attempt to get the upper
hand again.
Here’s how it works. If you want to get any other being
(human or animal) to repeat a particular behaviour,
you will have to give them an indication that you have
noticed the activity, and then either
increase the chances of them doing it
again by rewarding them, or decrease
the chances of a repeat performance
by punishing them. Words do not
need to come into it. Food and claws
will do.
So, your cat notices that when you go
to the fridge or cat food cupboard,
sometimes food appears in their
bowl. Excellent.
Then your cat has a go at drawing
your attention to the fridge or the
cat food cupboard. First they walk
around, but then they make a noise.
They watch to see what gets you out
of your chair – a yowl is what
it takes. And then, silly
you, you give them food
to keep them quiet. Oh
no! You have just rewarded
the yowling, not the silence! Your
cat can keep you hopping up and down all night with
this method. They can also wake you up whenever they
feel like it.
Once your cat has trained you, ignoring the yowl is really
hard. Because now your cat thinks you have lost your
mind and forgotten your training! For every time that you
answer the yowl (by responding, or worse still by filling
the food dish), you have to ignore the yowl 10 times at
least, in order to try to get the cat to understand that the
yowling technique will not work any more. Fortunately,
you can speed-up this process by diverting the cat to another
activity. So now when they yowl, they get a game
(often, especially with young cats, all they want is your
attention anyway and the game is the
best fun). Most cats are not marathon
players, and after a quick bat or two at
a rope, they’ll go back to bed without
any extra food. At the Cat Clinic, we
talk to many, many distraught owners
who are being driven mad by their
cat’s training success. Just remember:
how do they get tigers to jump
through hoops of fire? By giving them
food when they get to the other side!
Now think of the things your cat will
not let you do. Clip claws, give pills,
comb them. How did they train you
to stop doing those things? A growl,
a hiss, a hook with
a claw. They have
punished you for
doing something
they did not like,
and did not want you to
do again. The problem is, no one has managed to
train a cat through punishment – they just get fiercer. You
have to give them something they want – like a delicious
food treat – in exchange for their permission to take a bit
of liberty with their personal space. You have to be careful
with the timing here – otherwise you will be giving
them the treat for behaving badly! If you do then you can
kiss your chances of a successful nail clip or comb out
goodbye!
So next time you plan to jump to your kitty’s command,
just remember, it is you who has just been trained by an
expert!
