It’s much easier to train dogs to do tricks, and many people think that means dogs are superior in some way. Though that’s not true. To believe that, it means they don’t understand dogs, or cats.
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Many of the “tricks” dogs learn are simply behaviors dogs do anyway. They already know how to sit, lie down, and extend a paw to show friendship. All people do is let them know that if they do this on command, they will get something for it. Dogs find this a fair deal.
It’s easy to strike this deal with dogs because they are pack animals. They are willing, even eager, to be told what to do, in exchange for treats, or even some love and respect. In the pack, whether canine or human, every dog has their job to do. It can be guarding sheep or making guests laugh. It’s all the same to them.
Cats don’t have pack behavior. This means cats already have a different attitude towards what they do. They do what they do because they want to.
It doesn’t make them smarter, or dumber. It just makes them different.
My Elkhound/Lab mix, Arby, was my circus dog. He knew at least 25 tricks, including handing out the mail when he knew who it was for and “standing on his head.” I was a little bit special, because I loved working with Arby, and Arby was a little bit special, because he was a ham who loved “performing.” We spent some time together each day, working on his tricks, and we both enjoyed it.
But cats don’t have the stamina dogs do. Training a cat can’t take place over thirty minutes at a stretch, since the cat is going to get bored, and then so do we. Training a cat to do tricks needs to be done with one or two tries, several times a day, and we have to make it worth it to the cat with a treat, every time, or the cat is going to think we’ve gone loopy, and lose interest in this game.
Dogs have an underlying structure that reaches for obedience. Cats don’t.
I was able to teach Puffy to pat me with his paw when he wanted something. I started with treats; holding it in my palm, letting him reach for it, and then giving him the treat. Soon, Puffy was using his paw to ask for things on his own, whether he wanted a treat or petting. Puffy went with the “paw trick” because it worked for him. He needed a way to catch a human’s attention, and kept using it for that purpose.
Later, Puffy came up with his own trick; pretending he was weak from hunger to let us know the bowl was low. He would drag himself into the room, and raise one… trembling… paw…
He came up with this one on his own, and kept doing it because it got results. I don’t think I could have taught Puffy such an elaborate trick. There would be no way for him to know what this series of moves were for, and it would be difficult to get him to connect all the dots; unless they were his dots.
Our cats probably have their own tricks; ways of getting us to do certain things. The more elaborate and funny their tricks are, the more likely we are to laugh and give them what they want. That’s how cats do tricks.
And it certainly works for them.
So the next time someone denigrates cats for “not doing tricks,” maybe we can share the tricks our cats have taught us.
That should settle the intelligence question, shouldn’t it?
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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.
Our babies all have to say “mama” when they want their dinner. It started out with our girl, who naturally made similar noises when she was hungry — I just taught her to “enunciate,” lol. The boys came later and copied her… although they have different meows, so they sound like they are saying “ah-ah” and “momo” instead of mama. In any case, it’s really, really funny. People are always amazed and delighted to see their tricks!
My boy fetches. I throw his sparkle ball, and he brings it back. I didn’t teach him to do that. He realized one day that if he kept bringing it back, I would keep throwing it. My other boy doesn’t get the concept. Once the ball stops moving, he looks at me to come get it. So I bought him multiple foam balls so that I could throw them and watch him chase each one.