Cat Does Dog Tricks

The moggie I keep house for use to live with a guy who tried to teach it to give a Nazi salute before being fed (the cat was half-way to doing one anyway - no idea why). I decided to let that training drop.

I have got him trained to obey orders - "Eat!" he's very good at. "Stop scratching the ****ing couch!" we're working on.

Bob

Bob, the way to get a cat to stop scratching the couch is twofold: 1) Create an association between scratching a sturdy scratching post and something the cat loves (like treats), and 2) Create an association between scratching the couch and something unpleasant (like aluminum foil pinned to the corners where he scratches). We got a "cat tree" with the uprights wrapped in sisal. Every time we caught a cat scratching where it wasn't supposed to, we took it and gently "scratched" its claws on the scratching post and then gave it a treat. It took a few weeks but it worked. My Maine Coon would rather scratch the soles of shoes, so we nailed a piece of old tire to one of the uprights and put the shoes away, and he gets it.

Now if I can just figure out how to make my slightly retarded shorthair tom stop peeing in front of the entry door of my apartment...

I wouldn't call it a trick, exactly, since I never actually trained her to do it, but my cat Puck has picked up this "accidentally conditioned beneficial behavior," in which I tap on a surface and call her name, and she will jump up onto the surface I indicate.

It's very impressive when she does her "circus lion" impression for visitors, making athletic leaps at my command. It's good exercise for her, too. It's also handy for when she's somewhere I don't want her to be (like on my desk in front of the keyboard) -- I can tap on a nearby chair or shelf, and say, "Puck! Jump!," and off she goes before she even knows why.

And though I've heard that cats can only be trained for food rewards, she's perfectly content to leap where I tell her in exchange for praise and affection. She is a Good Cat, and at 18 years old, she can still make a four-foot vertical leap onto an area about 6"x6".

Fooey... I didn't train my cat, she trained me! ;-)

All the other cats must think this one is a tool.

I'm pretty sure the cat would stop obeying commands if the treats stopped for too long. Dogs just keep going whether there's treat or not. I suppose almost any animal that is at least as intelligent as a dog can be trained through reward/punishment conditioning.

I had a cat that would fetch things for me. whether a tossed ball or some other small object that I would name. Considered him the smartest cat I'd ever met. My current cat is a lazy old thing that just doesn't have it in him to do anything like that for me. Perhaps my next cat will have a few more brain cells available....then I can do cat agility with it! :)

Nathaniel @#5: It's not just reward/punishment -- that works on more or less anything smart enough to remember what happened last time.

Dogs, unlike cats, are social enough to recognize their household as a social group, and learn not just individual tricks, but how to "work" as members of their mostly-humanoid "pack". Of course, not dogs actually get the "proper education", but that's more often the (original) owner's fault than the dog's.

Well we are impressed. None of our furballs will even think about doing anything we ask, period! However the humans are trained very well. Thanks for sharing this! Too fun!

When my Daddy closed the bedroom door on me, at nights, years ago...

I taught myself to fetch a piece of paper, and shove it under the door... mostly at 4 or 5am.

If we hadn't moved I might have eventually been able to teach myself to write...so the piece of paper wouldn't be blank. ;-D

It's not that cats can't be trained, it's that we only choose to train special humans. Mine know that when I spin, they give me a handout. It's quite simple to train humans, if you have the patience.