Training a cat — strengthening the bond between you

Train a cat? Is such a thing possible? Of course it is. Certainly. Do not expect a Lassie or anything of that sort, but teaching your cat what certain words mean is very good fun for the pair of you.

Before you start, it is important to understand that giving a cat orders will not get you far. Suggesting things to it is a great deal more effective. Suggest first, then show the cat why the thing is worth doing, and you are on the right road. Try ordering it about and you will be left sitting there alone.

Why teach a cat manners? Is it not humiliating? Let us answer both questions at once. Why? Because it is fun — for you and for the cat alike. It builds communication between you, makes the two of you a single “team” and, done properly, strengthens trust. It also develops the cat’s mental powers, which are very considerable and scarcely used at all in its dealings with people. And, most important of all to us, it strengthens the affection between the person and the cat.

Now, is it humiliating? I do not think so, and unless your friends laugh at the cat, it will very likely not think so either. It depends on your own approach, I suspect. If you think teaching a cat is silly, then do not do it: you will not be able to hide that from the cat, and the moment it senses it, you can forget the training altogether.

But if you think that building mutual understanding, that throwing a bridge of communication between two species, is a job worth doing, then go ahead. I will wager you are surprised at how many undiscovered talents your four-legged friend turns out to have.

Use your voice properly

Your voice is the most effective training tool there is. It is a very flexible one, it is always to hand and it is simple to use. To use it properly for this purpose you need only know a few rules.

Careful with the volume

A normal cat hears excellently, far better than we do. And yet we often behave towards cats as though they were deaf. We talk to them too loudly — the way people sometimes talk too loudly to a visitor from another country, in the hope that it will help them understand each other. It does not help there, and with a cat too loud a voice only causes trouble. It leaves the cat tense, and a tense cat learns very little. Talk to a cat in an ordinary voice; that is all that is asked of you.

Mind your language

Human language throws cats into complete confusion. It is not among their natural means of communication, and the fact that they can understand it at all is explained only by their highly developed minds. Clever cat or not, yours can use every scrap of help we can offer it. You will make the task easier by speaking clearly and using simple words. Be a hundred per cent consistent in the words you choose and your cat will be very nearly a hundred per cent consistent in responding to them. If you are teaching it the word “Sit!”, for instance, do not say “Sit!” one time and “Sit down!” the next: that will only confuse it.

Say it only once

Cats, knowing nothing of human language, remember exactly the word you teach them. So if you say “Sit! Sit! Sit!” and then move the cat into a sitting position, it will decide that the command runs precisely like that: “Sit! Sit! Sit!”. Say plain “Sit!” afterwards and the cat will not respond, because it simply does not recognise the word it needs — exactly as “Baa” is not at all the same thing as “B-B”.

Mind your tone

Cats may not really understand human language, but they understand tone of voice perfectly. Use tone to get the most out of it. The words you teach your cat should be said in a neutral tone — not as a request and not as a command. A plain statement is best. Being polite human beings, we tend to put things to cats as questions: “Will you sit?” we say. It is far better and far more effective simply to say “Sit!”. Try to say the words in the same tone every time; that makes it much easier for the cat to work out what is wanted. Praise the cat in a warmer, higher tone — something like “Puss, puss!” Those words have been working on thousands of cats for years.

Rewarding the cat

What makes a cat cooperate with you? That depends on the particular cat. But in most cases the immediate motive is a reward of one kind or another, and the simplest and most reliable reward is food.

Some people react badly to training based on rewarding with food. They say they do not want to “bribe” the animal. Well, I have some shocking news: all training and all teaching, whether of people or of animals, rests on a system of “bribery” — or, to put it as we prefer to, on positive reinforcement. I have never been able to understand why some people stubbornly refuse to train their cat with food and at the same time think a weekly wage is a fine thing. A wage is positive reinforcement too. How many of us would go on turning up for work unpaid?

At school the “bribe” is marks. Work hard and you get a good one. One way or another, that system satisfies most of us. As an alternative, a show of affection can serve as positive reinforcement: warm praise is motive enough, for some cats and for most dogs, to repeat the behaviour that earned it. But whatever the particular situation during training, positive reinforcement is almost always at work somewhere.

We, however, shall be working with food as positive reinforcement. And for heaven’s sake praise your cat as much as you like. Praise the cat while you are rewarding it with food and it will soon come to find the praise almost as agreeable as the food itself. Here is an obvious conclusion, and an important one: since you are using food as the reward, the best time to work with the cat is when it is hungry. Five minutes of teaching before a meal is quite enough. The sessions are astonishingly effective, and they do not have to be long at all. A week of five or ten minutes a day, and your cat will be playing the game called “I say and you do” with real pleasure.