Thanks for stopping by! Get The Way of Cats, delivered, by asking for my RSS feed. Get my free cat advice newsletter by signing up here and get the FREE eBook, Ten Cat Tricks (Every Human Should Know.)What is the best way to get our cats to behave? We need to set up feedback loops to shape our cat’s responses.
Cats usually do not misbehave on purpose. A lot of our cat’s poor choices can come from a sheer lack of understanding of what is expected of them.
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Cats, as they see it, do not do bad things. If they see something as bad, they won’t do it.
We can best come to a shared view on behavior when we spend time with our kitten or cat, acting distressed when they are too rowdy, and being loving when they moderate their behavior in ways which will please us.
All of the cat’s highly developed senses are constantly monitoring their actions, and their environment’s reactions, so they can make decisions about how their behavior works for them, or not. When we insert ourselves into the cat’s world, we become part of the environment that is feeding information back to them.
The best way we can loom large in our cat’s equations is to form close bonds with our cat.
Then they come to care very much about our reaction. Our distress can be communicated subtly and softly, and they will respond to it; all without stressing our friendship.
We and cats both have a nervous system that is capable of tuning itself to be more, or less, sensitive. People sleeping near noisy areas learn to “tune out” that noise, and react less to it. If we are loud, harsh, or inexplicable to our cats, all these discipline efforts will come to naught because the cat will tune us out; by avoiding us as much as possible.
When we care about the cat’s feelings, they will care about ours. This is the most effective way to communicate our wishes to our cats. By the time our kitten gains some maturity, or our grown cat has settled into our household, we should have already come up with substitutes we can direct them to when they go after stuff they aren’t supposed to have.
And get them to choose these substitutes just by asking nicely.
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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.
Old trick: if you want someone to stop yelling and listen, don’t yell back. Talk softly, and they will have to quiet down to hear you. Apparently this works on cats.