For example, I like to train mine to accept me providing scritches (petting) with my feet and for them to be equally comfortable with using foot as hand
Fetch: grab the toy if they play with it and it ends up close by, use verbal reinforcement
Names: the cats recognize everyone’s name in the hous thanks to reinforcement learning
Locations: the cats know where I’m going and can beat me there because I tell them where I’m going, sounds like reinforcement learning again?
Activities: set phrases like “let’s go”, “come on”, “let’s get some food”, “jump up”, etc, all by reinforcement training.
Paw-touching: slowly touch more and more often, for longer, until nail clipping is a breeze. Hmm… Might be reinforcement training again.
To end bad behaviors, hiss, it’s a built-in “no” for cats.
Oh and I forgot, a big one, I engage the cats if they show interest in my task.
When cooking they can smell safe things, if I’m working on tech i have a very large screw and bolt for them to play with/try out instead of my small ones.
Cats are social and want to be included, if you give them the option to do “parallel play” I think it will improve what people see as problem behaviors that are really just begging to be included.
I taught mine this cool trick where I’m holding him and he hears a slightly loud noise and then claws the ever loving shit out of me and leaves me deeply gouged and bleeding in several places. It’s a great trick.
My cat has this fun one where when I try to pet her she gives me the most bewildered look and leaves the room as quickly as possible.
Helps to keep treats on file and give them opportunities to earn them by being close to you and interacting more.
I have a more skittish delicate one who sits on my lap/chest even though she use to be wayyy more flighty
The cat I had when I was a kid would occasionally use the toilet. Just for peeing.
When he was done he’d paw the handle. He wasn’t strong enough to actually flush it, but he tried.
This definitely happend 😹
Yeah… every story on the internet is 100% true, take it from me.
Source: am internet
Good @thorbot!
I mean there are hundreds of videos of cats using toilets, so maybe his parents had taught the cat to do it?
It did, but if you choose to live in a universe where cats don’t try to emulate humans, I’m not going to stop you.
I miss that cat. We used to chill out and Doritos together.
Its all good man, I saw the cheap shot and I literally couldn’t contain myself. Its more of a reflection of my im/compulsivity than commentsry on ur truth-telling dealio
Thelonious Monk, famous jazz pianist, actually wrote a book on this. We tried to get our cat to do it but alas, too dumb (sorry Herbert).
U can’t be serious?!
EditNotAnEdit: u sure you aren’t thinking of Charles Mingus or is that his stage name or something? I had to look it up but ironically i may still be overlooking this vital issue
I used treats to show her I like it when she boops my nose with her nose. Now she just does it when I slow blink at her and she comes over and boops my snoot then I take a single finger and gently stroke her cheeks. Then she just loafs on my chest and purrs.
I. Want. Your. Cat. To teach mine how to be movie-level adorable.
This took me a few months and I’m fairly skilled at both training animals and working with people to change complex behavior patterns. So this is gonna be heavy on the behaviorism side and somewhat show how little I know about cats in particular. Repeat each step a couple times. if you have trouble with a step, try going back to the previous step and repeat it a few times again.
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Make sure the cat knows how to take treats out of your fingertips safely. This is a trick that is actually usually easier to teach an older animal because it requires patience. Start a fun new game where you literally just give them treats from your fingers for doing nothing and the only rule is to not hurt you. Give them up to a normal maximum of maybe 5 in a row depending on the size of the treat. But if they get too excited and hurt you trying to get the treat, yell OW and stop immediately, AND do everything to prevent them from eating the treat you just offered. Eventually they will learn to walk up calmly and gently take it. This is very helpful considering you are about to put the treat near your face.
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Give cat treat near your face
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Give cat treat in front or your nose.
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Swap the treat for your nose at the last second and boop their nose with your nose.
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Decide on a word or sound to correspond to their nose touching your nose. I make a noise somewhere between clicking my tongue and kissy noies.
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Stop using the treat to directly lead them into the motion and just hold it off to the side so they know it’s there, but instead try to get them to boop your nose just by using your verbal signal.
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Hide the treat, but still give it for a successful snoot boop.
Quality Control Moment! It was important to me to get a good firm snoot boop, or no treat. This communicated to the cat that I did really want a full snoot boop, not just face proximity. So I didn’t reward snoot boops I wasn’t sure I felt. Almost always with people and animals you’ll get whatever behavior out of them that you reward (although sometimes with both people and animals it can sometimes be difficult to tell exactly what they’re getting out of it, but I digress), so if there’s a way you do NOT want to be snoot booped, this is the part where you communicate that to the cat. Do not give treats for snoot boops you do not enjoy.
- Introduce intermittent reward to fully solidify the behavior. This isn’t actually about your comfort, intermittent rewards are actually more powerful than consistent one (it’s one of the key things that makes negative consequences so hard to successfully implement; any inconsistency is just a highly powerful reward). I usually start with every other, but if you have a particularly clever or stubborn cat you could even skip only every third or fourth treat at first. You then wanna move from there to every other, then start giving a treat only every third time and so on. You’ll never taper the animal all the way off the reward, but you can definitely get it much closer to a “when I feel like it” schedule.
These last two are just cuteness fluff on top of the core trick.
- Cross-taper the command into a slow blink. Do this by doing the command and the slow blink one after the other, or by using a verbal command to get the animal’s attention, then utilize the slow blink. After a while, try the slow blink alone. If it’s not working to back to strengthening the behavior, maybe by increasing the treats at least for a bit.
For this last one it’s ideal to have a cat that really likes attention from humans. The more of a human attention whore they are the less repetitions you will need since they will be excited to get pets in place of food. It helps for the other steps to have a cat that is comfortable with humans, but anyone can be a ho for treats. To accept love as payment you have to actually like the person.
- Transition from treats to pets. You should already be intermittently rewarding. Keep giving the same amount of treats, but occasionally pet them in their very favorite bestest scritches spot. The one that makes them go bonkers. It’s usually on the head or neck, or somewhere on the spine. My cats is her cheeks, as stated. If they’re a super human attention ho cat sometimes you can even give less treats or even just discontinue giving treats entirely.
Now my cat is like "damn all you wanted was snoot boops and I could’ve been getting prime cheek rubs this whole time???
Translating across entirely different types of cognition (as between separate species) is exhausting.
Wow, thank you for this awesome write-up! You didn’t need to go so out of your way to teach a stranger, but I appreciate the heck out of it.
I never would have thought this could work with cats, or any kind of behavioral conditioning for that matter. It’s the exact thing I would expect from a dog-training regimen. Regardless, I’ll give it a shot. I think I’ll see great results from the one who used to be right behind my heels wherever I would go at home. She still adores all attention, but she’s a little more independent now 😊
Thanks again for the tips! You’ll have a share of the credit for any future snoot boops.
You made the mistake of getting me to talk about something I love teaching. The cool part, to me, isn’t that it works with dogs too, it’s that it also works with people. The only difference is people, for the most part, get to decide what they want to be trained to do. Cats and dogs tend to react more directly to the environment. This is a pretty critical part of DBT Theory which is one of the core theories I use whether I’m dealing with a substance use patient or some one who’s chronically self-injurious.
Behavioral Chain Analysis is also pretty cool and fun! It doesn’t even have to be about anything serious. The example given in the class I took was “I want to remember to drink more water,” and the easiest link to break in the chain (iirc) turned out to be proximity to the water, so the solution was to keep the water bottle at the work desk. Here’s a good worksheet if you ever wanna try it but need a good way to write it down.
I used to date a girl who was a psychology major. She was studying behavioral psychology so ever since those days, I’ve respected and appreciated the people who dedicate their careers to understanding the brain.
I’ve figured out the water example on my own after getting a water bottle for work. It started out more as a “I don’t want people to judge me for being a soda fiend, so I should ‘fall in line’” kind of deal, but now I really don’t crave soda at work. Unfortunately at home it’s like a switch gets flipped to “drink sugar now”, but I’m working on it. At least I’m getting lots of water at work. I’m gonna look into the links you provided and see if it helps. Thank you!
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We didn’t so much teach this trick, as he learned it on his own, but we got an automatic feeder for him to help us with his diet. It feeds him 6x per day, and since we’re no longer the ones giving him food, he has stopped begging us for food at all hours.
In any case, a few months ago, we noticed him in the dining room, staring at the grandfather clock. Then the clock chimed, and he ran over to the feeder and stared at it until a few seconds later, when it dispensed the food. He doesn’t do this, except around feeding time.
So, it’s just pavlovian: he’s learned to associate the clock chime with the feeder, and has a general idea when feeding time is based on how hungry he is. Still, it’s a neat party trick to tell guests we have a cat who can read a clock and tell time.
My cat can almost definitely tell time within about 2 minuts. At least for a specific time of day. He gets canned food the same time every day, and will remind me I’ve yet to feed him at most 2 minuts after (unless he’s asleep). The only clocks I have in the house are digital, and none makes a sound. It takes him a few days to adjust moving to and form daylight savings time, and the change is gradual. He does this after changing apartments, so it’s not some noise form the outside. I have no explanation other than he can tell time.
Its thought that dogs can tell the passage of time through scent. I’d be surprised if cats didn’t do something similar
My kids taught one of our cats to high five, it’s cute. Also if you never let them outside off a leash, they do learn to calmly step into the harness.
I leash/harness train mine. It’s nice to be able to mostly walk them around outside like dogs. Also I train them to ride on my shoulders for transportation. That way when they get too lazy to walk back to the house or I need to carry them around for any other reason I can just plop them on my shoulders and they will ride there, keeping my hands free. My neighbors probably think I’m crazy.
u/VegaLyrae’s suggestions are all excellent.
I like your style.
Mine just jumps on my shoulders anytime I bend over anyway, but then she likes to slowly slide down when she wants to get off, and claws are not really fun when that happens
Consent is one of the harder things to teach cats.
I taught my cat how to speak. Now he doesn’t shut up.
I also “taught” him to tolerate being cradled on his back like a baby.
How did you do the second? My eldest hates being carried. My youngest doesn’t like it either but he’s still young enough to be trained to like it, I think.
Be sure you’re supporting his back bunny-feet when you try. They feel safer knowing they can spring away, and are therefore less likely to struggle. Because cats. Also if they get away, they’ll land better so they don’t get scared for next time. If nothing else they’ll be training you to be a fun springboard, so be sure to carry them to something good like their favorite level of the cat tree.
I started cradling him when he was just old enough to be adopted. Every time we crossed paths, I would say “Scoop!”, scoop him up with a hand under his chest, roll him over backwards with my other hand on his butt, and lay him down on my arm like that. Then I’d scratch his tummy and give him kisses, then let him go after a little bit.
Two of my cats had upper respiratory infections as kittens, and I would spend a few minutes with them cradled in my arm while I scraped gunk out of their eyes and noses so they could see and breathe better, and giving them their medication.
By the time they were over their colds, they would just lay there quietly, patiently. They seem to like being held that way now.
My eldest cat often has a little discharge in the corner of his eyes. I’m having some limited success doing the same thing, just gently grooming his face with one hand, while scruffing him on his side or back with the other. He prefers wrestling to cuddling, though. He tolerates me touching his face only if I have my hand on the back of his neck. As soon as I let go, it’s wrestling time again.
I too made the mistake of giving my cat forbidden knowledge. She won’t shut up.
My cat recognizes the tea kettle whistle as time to get off my lap. “Up” and “Down” mean the same thing (you need to get down so I can get up).
She’s not the brightest, but a warning that she needs to move means I get clawed less.
And she can join you for a teaparty, whoa, way cool trick yo
she doesn’t drink tea (yet), but she does know head butting my hand when I’m holding a cup is a bad idea!
I taught my cats to high five. That’s a bit fun.
My cat has learned the opposite; when I put my foot out she grabs it and tries to fuck me up with rabbit kicks lol she doesn’t use claws though so it’s okay.
I’m pretty sure that’s the default kitty behaviour
Well she is a standard issue, sounds about right then
Mine knows: touch, spin, high 5, up (stands on his back legs), lie down
My cat goes out to get coffee and breakfast on the weekends. I think that’s a little bit cooler than all of you guys’ tricks
Hand signals over verbal signals. They listen better and it freaks your friends out when you rub your finger together and all your cats show up.
Ignore me.
Wake me up.Knock my shit over.
Fit in the box.My cat has mastered all these tricks.
I feel like people are crazy pussy-cat-whipped. I would never allow my cats to do the typical cat complaints, and I’m super good to them.
