Adult cats can be astonished and exasperated by a kitten’s blatant ignorance of how things fall over and what isn’t good to play with. Often, they will feel like avoiding the kitten, dreading being blamed for kitten fall-out. While humans can find their patience sorely tried by plucking the kitten from every possible area they aren’t supposed to be in.
What saves everyone else in the household from feeling upset at the kitten is when we realize that the world is new to them; and they need help. Every being in the house will make allowances when we see the world through their new, fresh, outlook.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
The biggest pitfall with kittens is not how to discipline them; it’s not disciplining them at all. How can we express displeasure at those tiny, trusting, faces? Can’t we just let them be kittens, and leave the training for later? And they don’t seem to pay any attention to us, anyway!
While it can seem that our training attempts are pointless, there are ways of showing a kitten proper behavior, and keeping that abundant affection still coming our way. Kittens live to learn. They are storing up experiences every second they are awake. This is a golden opportunity to shape those busy little brains in a way that will let us relax in the future.
Young kittens seem to be little balls of mayhem who aren’t learning a thing. They keep getting hauled out of the same spots. They keep knocking over the same things.
But this is how kittens learn. Through repetition. If they try to climb the throw on the back of the couch and it slides off and dumps them on the floor, they are too young to know that the throw is always going to do that. Only having the throw dump them on the floor many times do they learn; oh, the throw always does that.
We may have to pluck them out from under the entertainment center over and over again, but we are teaching them a valuable lesson; getting under the entertainment center means getting hauled out and given a toy. Over time, they learn to take the shortcut; they skip the entertainment center and just go for the toy instead.
But only when they learn all the steps. Kittens have to learn all the steps in order to skip some; that is the way everyone learns. If every young one needed to only be told something once, we could have toddlers operating heavy machinery and going off to college. But that doesn’t work. With any young one.
Both physiology and psychology have a concept known as “patterning.” By moving an injured limb through its range of proper motion, or by moving our minds through a predetermined set of thoughts, we achieve mobility, whether physical or mental. With young kittens, everything we do contributes to the patterns impressed upon their behavior.
Around six months, kittens develop enough reasoning power to begin to understand “cause and effect.” But this is an elaborate process that they refine their whole lives. Expecting a young kitten to grasp it is asking too much. Pushing the response to “make the kitten learn” to leave something alone will teach them only one thing; to be afraid of us and our bizarre behavior.
Some areas of the house must always be left alone, but we can best convey that concept by kitten-proofing and monitoring them over stuff we can’t block off or take away. It might mean leaving the kitten in the bathroom when we are away from home, or having heavy objects lying around the house for a month or two. But this is a far better solution than trying to get the kitten to understand they have to leave stuff alone by one big dramatic gesture when they play with something they shouldn’t.
We think we are scaring the kitten away from dangerous or delicate objects. We made an impression, all right, but the kitten won’t connect it with electrical cords or tempting shelving. The kitten will connect it with us suddenly becoming scary. What we scared the kitten away from is us.
That’s not what we want.
So be patient with kittens, and be judicious with such discipline tools as water spritzing bottles and blasts from an air can. These have their place, and are far better tools than hitting or yelling. But we can’t drive the kitten away from everything. This would only result in a confused and frustrated baby.
Constant patient redirection, with lots of toys and safe areas in the house, is the way to raise a loving kitten. We spend a lot of time with them that way; which was the point of getting one in the first place.
Imagine those patterns impressing themselves on the little growing brain, and remember that they are only this tiny for so short a time.
We want to spend this time enjoying them, and encouraging them to love us back.
Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more to raising and training a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CAT TRAINING TIPS.
