It’s been a while since I last blogged- a month, in fact. One wonderfully busy month, in which I was able to help lots of dogs, and lots of owners. It’s great to know that my name is starting to get out there, and even better, to be recognized positively! I haven’t yet had a cat client, but that’s not too surprising. Around here, cats are basically let to themselves for better or for worse. That doesn’t mean they live outside necessarily, although a lot of cats in Dubuque county do spend at least part of the time outside. However, even strictly indoor cats rarely get to experience much besides the daily feeding and litterbox scooping and maybe some petting or playtime with their owner.

Cats can do so much more! They have a simply amazing sense of hearing (did you know they hear better than dogs?) and they can probably smell about 14 times better than we can. They too can be trained, a fact that baffles most people. I think it’s a concept that is baffling simply because most people locally don’t even think about training cats. Cats are thought to be too independent to train, and it’s very unusual as a concept to even try. But those tigers and lions you see in shows: those are trained cats. If we work that hard to train a wild animal, why not a domestic pet who lives in your own home with you?

Cats operate very much on habit. That is why litterbox training for so many people is so easy. The cat develops the habit of eliminating in a litterbox while they are young, and then carry that habit on, barring complications (see my discussion on litterbox issues). However, the same basic principles that apply to dog training also apply to cats. Rewarding behavior we like increases the likelihood the cat will repeat the behavior, and punishing behaviors we don’t like reduces the likelihood that the cat will repeat the punished behavior. Now, I mean punishment in the behavioral sense here, not physical punishment (cats don’t respond well to that). What I mean is that if we take away something good or introduce something unpleasant, this is a punishment. You also need to be aware of the environment- is the behavior itself self-rewarding (such as scratching your new couch)? If so, we need to manage the environment to keep the cat from having access to the environment in which the unwanted behavior occurs (so, no access to the couch) in every instance in which we are unable to watch him. Otherwise, we need to replace the inherent reward (scratching) with something unpleasant.

For instance, when he was a kitten my cat Friendly loved to scratch the one stair in our house that is carpeted. The stair steps down from the landing to the carpeted office, so we would shut the office door sometimes to keep him out, but he started finding his way back into the office to scratch the carpet on the stair. So we went out and spent something minimal (maybe $1.50?) on a roll of double-sided tape and covered the side of the step where Friendly liked to scratch with tape. This way, when he went to scratch on the step whether we were there or not, the tape would stick just a little to his paws (something that is very unpleasant to a lot of cats). It took a while of re-taping the step every once in a while, but we didn’t even finish the roll and now we have a cat who ignores the step and will instead favor his scratching pads (which we are very happy about). 

Cats can learn more than just house-manners though. They can also learn obedience, just like dogs. Every cat, in my opinion, should know his name and come to it. This makes life so much easier on you when you can simply call your cat and have them come running. Why not teach them other cues as well? This learning builds a bond between you and your kitty, enhances your relationship, curb boredom and boredom-related misbehaviors and antics, and is often fun for you and your cat! 

So get out there, and teach your cat something new this week!