Wait a minute. Don’t cats hate to be laughed at? Yes, that’s right.
Cats don’t like feeling the joke is on them.
If the cat makes us laugh, on purpose, the joke is on us. Our cat likes that perfectly well.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Lively cats who wear their personalities on their sleeve are so enjoyable we wonder how we can encourage more such behavior. Often, our laughter and attention is all a cat needs to keep performing.
But there’s things we can do to bring out the “ham” in our cat.
Invite the cat to feel comfortable with us. We might not realize it, but cats are always monitoring our reactions for clues about how our behavior affects them. If we are relaxed and encouraging, even when things take an unexpected turn, our cat will feel confident about continuing.
If our cat is walking along the back of the sofa, and we applaud them and make circus sound effects, that’s encouraging them. Even if they lose their balance and fall in a way that dumps someone’s beverage on the carpet.
Our cat never anticipated that could happen. And maybe we should have. So, no harm, no foul. We clean it up without a fuss and tell the cat we’ll both be more careful next time.
Respond the way the cat likes. We will show our appreciation by doing something the cat likes, not dislikes. This seems simple, but we often don’t think of how loudness and waving limbs, no matter how well meant, doesn’t always convey positive messages to our cats.
We can say whatever we want… we just have to lower our voices to a whisper at first, so as not to spook the cat. If the cat looks back over their shoulder at us, all they need is a smile and a long slow blink and they will know we like it.
Give the thing a name. Don’t ask the cat to “walk on the back of the couch like you did that time.” This is too long and has too many ambiguous cues.
If we call it “tightrope walk,” the cat will know what we mean.
This will also help us teach the cat to do tricks and amaze our friends.
Go professional. Get some proper equipment and take up cat training. Do a few things each day, as part of playing with our cat and giving them treats, and before we’re aware of it, we have a trained cat.
Clicker training is a natural for cats, because they can’t help paying attention to the clicker sound.
Puzzle boxes will intrigue the cat. If we give them one of their own, whether they ever open it on their own, or watch us do it, this box will become a cat favorite. Making more things a cat’s favorite things increases our communication.
It makes it easy to increase our enjoyment in our cat.
Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to understand our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on WHY CATS DO THAT.
