Cats are very intelligent and curious animals, with a great learning capacity. However, many people may find it strange to teach new things and tricks beyond basic obedience to a cat, due to its reputation for being fairly independent and self-centered animals.
However, feline training exists, and this activity brings several benefits to your cat’s well-being, as it stimulates it mentally, offers different challenges in your daily life and, of course, enriches the relationship with the tutor. So, if you want to know how to form a cat, read this Animal Expert article to the end.
- The concept of training refers to the act of performing a learning process with an animal.
- So that it learns to perform an action when instructed.
- By means of a gesture or an oral order.
This procedure is performed on all kinds of animals, with the intention of them learning the most varied skills and / or tricks. From small actions, such as playing the piano or sitting down, to complex performances, such as dancing.
This term should not be confused with education, because while this concept is related to training, being both learning processes, they have different objectives.
Education is necessary for the animal to learn to behave and adapt positively to different everyday situations. For example, teaching a cat to play without hurting you means you teach it to behave properly when you play with it. You don’t teach him a specific command, as you would in training, but you change his behavior to make the game beneficial to both of them. In this article, we do not explain how to educate a cat, but how to train cats to learn specific commands.
Of course! Training is a procedure that can be used in all kinds of animals, whether our pets, birds, rodents and even famous dolphins. All animals capable of learning can be trained when learning theory, especially conditioning. However, it is necessary to know the needs, skills and patterns of behavior of each species to have realistic goals.
But why aren’t we so familiar with this facet of cats compared to dogs? The individual characteristics of cats make them harder to train than dogs. In any case, the correct claim would be that dogs are much easier to train for who they are, dogs. This is because they have lived with humans for many centuries and, as our companions have been for so long, have shaped their cognition, having a much more adaptable spirit and an interest in pleasing us, in addition to learning, so they have been used for a variety of jobs and we know more about the facet of dog training.
Cats, on the other hand, are much more instinctive, do not have to please us and were not obliged to incline to learn, because they were not necessary over time to perform a specific job. These animals only became our pets because they were originally used to keep rats away, a goal for which they do not need to be trained, as they already do it for themselves.
Training a cat is a process that will require consistency, patience and understanding of feline behavior. The guidelines to consider are:
The time you spend training your cat should not exceed 15 minutes, several days a week. This is because your cat will surely lose interest, especially if you’ve recently started training it.
Therefore, it is ideal to finish the session before your cat starts to ignore or distract you. You should always make sure that your cat stays motivated throughout the session and that you finish the session, not him, when he is tired.
It is unthinkable to train a cat without using positive reinforcement, that is, without giving a very valuable price every time you perform the desired action. This is because the prize will motivate your cat to learn and pay attention to you.
The price in question should be something you only earn during training (so it’s not worth petting him or his food), something really valuable that the cat will associate with these sessions, such as wet food, ham slices, cat malt. ..
Finally, in many tricks that you can teach your cat, the prize will serve as a guide to follow, so that it moves in the desired way until you reach a specific position.
During training you have to set small goals that gradually approach the final goal, which is technically known in dressage as a growing criterion.
What does that mean? For example, if you want to teach your cat to stand on its two hind legs, you must first reward any elevation it does with its forelegs and gradually increase the difficulty, rewarding the cat each time it progresses. That is, it rewards when it lifts a leg, then rewards when it lifts two legs, then, when it holds them for a few seconds, when it lifts the body, etc. Therefore, you may not want your cat to stand. on its hind legs from the beginning, as it will not understand it and will not succeed and will eventually be frustrated.
We often tend to lift and move the animal as if it were a puppet to teach it how to perform a trick. This procedure is not entirely effective because, by the way it learns, the animal does not understand that it must take a position to which it is forced, but to act to obtain the reinforcement, that is, the price.
Using physical manipulation in cats is much more contradictory, because although dogs, depending on their personality, can tolerate manipulation to a lesser or greater degree (for example, when you take their paws to teach them how to kick), the cat simply hates you. For these animals, being caught is something that is instinctively perceived as a threat, so the exercise that should be motivating and fun for the feline ends up becoming unpleasant.
Likewise, punishing your cat for learning is simply unworkable, because it will not understand and generate mistrust, something totally counterproductive if what you want is that your cat wants to be with you and trust you, so that it can learn. new things.
To teach your cat to perform an action after asking with a verbal order, you must first teach him to obey the gesture, as he usually learns more easily to obey visual commands.
So, it is necessary to associate this gesture with an auditory stimulus, that is, a short and clear word, which must always be the same and in the same tone of voice so as not to create confusion.
Teaching a young cat is not the same as teaching an adult; Similarly, you should not have the same goals for a domesticated cat as for a frightened cat. The limit of what you can and can’t teach your cat will be your well-being. That is, if teaching your cat something implies that it will suffer stress and / or physical pain, because of its age, illness or personality … you should stop teaching this trick and look for a simpler one or obviously does not inconvenience the cat, because training has to be an activity that benefits both.
The clicker is a very useful tool used in the training of all kinds of animals, since it allows to teach all kinds of tricks and skills in a more spectacular way, respecting their natural behavior.
It consists of a small box (which fits perfectly to the hand) with a button, which every time you press it emits a “click” sound and serves to tell the animal what it is doing well, to repeat the behavior.
To use this tool, you must first load the clicker. This step involves associating the positive reinforcement of the “Click” sound. For this reason, in the early days of training, you only have to teach this association to create a good training base. To do this, offer a price to your cat and, every time you give it, make the sound. This way, your cat will understand that every time the “click” rings, you’ll reward him.
With the use of the clicker, there are many possibilities of what you can teach your cat. In fact, any behavior your cat normally performs, such as meowing, can be associated with a command if you gesture (visual stimulus), click when it performs the action, and rewards it instantly. Constantly, your cat will associate this gesture with the action you just performed.
Shall we learn how to train cats? To start training your cat, we recommend that you teach him simple tricks:
For more information, see this other article on teaching a cat to sit.
If you liked this article, also watch our video explaining how to earn the trust of your feline:
If you want to read articles similar to How to Train a Cat, we recommend that you visit our Basic Education section.