I had to share this video, it’s pretty funny. A great reason to teach your cat to “speak” on cue!
23 NovSinging Cats
19 NovThe Unscarable Cat
So as you all know, my cat has successfully scared me twice and I’ve got nothing on her. Basically, 2-0 and I’m losing the game. I tried to use my husband as a means to scare her (I asked for help) and so this was his attempt.
3-0.
16 NovBeginner Cat Trick Training
After training my cat Ninja to do some very basic behaviors like come, sit, stay and target I decided to move onto jumping behaviors. I thought she would have fun with them and I knew I would.
The next tricks I taught her were:
- Jump up (onto objects I point to)
- Jump from point A to point B
- Jump through a hoop
- Spin on command
- Jump into my lap on command
Making it a total of 11 tricks she has learned in 1.5 months. I gave her an entire month off training because I was traveling with her so it has been over a span of 2.5 months if you get real specific.
Teaching any jumping behaviors came very quickly to her. Once she learned the “jump”, the other jumping behaviors were a piece of cake for her to master.
The toughest one which I assumed would be the easiest was the “spin” which I think was so basic it bored her. So I had to make sure to mix up her training sessions a lot and make things more random for her in an effort to make the training more fun and less predictable on her end.
I actually had the best time teaching her to jump into my lap on command. It happened in just two days and it was a lot of fun. I hadn’t done any training where she had to do something on me so that changed it up a lot for her and took her a little bit to figure out that I was actually part of the behavior. Once she figured that out, it went super fast!
The other day I was able to really test out some of her training. I had a friend over and she performed every trick she knew in front of my friend which I was very impressed about. She hasn’t had to perform in front of anyone yet and she acted like nothing was different.
I was also outside earlier the next day and I heard a cat fight behind my fence. I kept climbing it and looking over, expecting to see Ninja and some other cat but hoping it wasn’t her. Finally, I called her and she came running and jumped over the fence into the yard… untouched. She looked like she had either done the butt-kicking or was watching it all happen… or clueless, who knows! But I was very happy she came on command from outdoors and out of sight.
Her training has really been useful for every day life with her. I recommend everyone train their cat, it makes a world of difference and really just makes your life easier, too.
15 NovCat Training Video
Here is a video of some of the things Ninja has learned in the past couple months. The newest trick she learned on this video was the “spin” and something I have noticed with her training is that she does the trick she just learned best when cued others she already knows well.
Her weakest trick is probably the “stay” which is why I didn’t click nor reward for it in this video. Instead I asked something else of her and ignored the behavior I didn’t like.
More to come soon! She just finished up learning how to jump into my lap and I am excited to get video footage of it to share.
14 NovAttempt #2: Trying to Scare My Cat
Well, one positive thing about me is I never seem to give up! But that hasn’t really helped me in my efforts to “sneak up on” my cat thus far… here is my second try back firing again. I can never seem to scare Ninja back as many times as she comes around to scare me!
03 NovTraining Cats Tricks
When starting to trick train my cat, I didn’t really know what to expect out of her. She’s only 4 years old, so she’s still pretty young and peppy and her and I already had a fairly good bond to where I could hold her attention. I made sure to give her some days off, since that is very important in training (everyone’s brains need a break!)
But I don’t think I ever expected to be able to teach my cat NINE TRICKS in just ONE MONTH! Some tricks took one day, others took maybe two days and some I worked on for longer just to make sure she had it right and maybe even to progress it further and get it better.
I also made sure to go back and cue tricks she already knew well while training a new one so that it would help build her confidence in learning – that way she would try new things and progress even FASTER.
I thought I had a good relationship with my cat, but now that her and I have discovered the world of training, our bond is SO much stronger than before. I can’t wait to keep going with her training. Since I’m traveling extensively and have been all month, she has had a month off of training (at least when it comes to learning new tricks) which I am hoping will help her motivation when we get home and start some more new things!
It has also been really fun to show her videos off to friends and family.
So don’t under estimate YOUR cat and what he/she can do! Even if your cat doesn’t even like you, you can use food at first as your cat’s main motivation to come to you and begin training with that. Eventually, your cat is going to enjoy training so much (and the treats, praise and pets that come along with it) that it will LOVE being with you, too! And you won’t believe the bond you’ll have.
31 OctCat Jumping Through Hula Hoop on Cue
After teaching Ninja how to jump on command (up and down) onto anything I wanted, I thought it would be a great next step to train her how to jump THROUGH something. Well, I trained my parrot how to fly through a hoop so I thought I’d use the same hula hoop for Ninja.
She learned the whole thing in no time at all and was doing a short “skip” so to speak through it on the first day. When I would make the training session go a little too long for her liking, she would begin rubbing up against the hula hoop as if to make it pet her instead so I would have to step back and make the hula hoop at a shorter distance for her again before moving on.
It’s a really cute trick though and one of my favorites because it’s so different. This one was just trained for fun but one I am glad I took the time to train! I hope you enjoy watching her in the video.
28 OctMotivation: Being Over and Under
Motivation level is just a fancy way of really saying how hungry is your cat?
When your cat is too hungry, it’s not a good thing. And when your cat isn’t hungry enough, it’s not a good thing either. Both result in your cat refusing to train.
When your cat is too hungry, it’s way too focused on the food and whatever it needs to do to get to it rather than the behavior you are asking. It’s just a pure lack of focus that you really don’t want.
When your cat isn’t hungry enough, it has the same focus problems but for the opposite reason: it really doesn’t care whether or not it gets the food and will do the minimum it has to, to get the reward. For example, if you are working on something new that the cat is having a harder time with; it will probably offer tricks it already knows instead as an easy way of earning the treat rather than the hard way of really working it out in its head.
If you are noticing your cat is too hungry during a training session, you can simply cue a really easy behavior it already knows and give a large reward in an effort to fill your cat up faster to its neutral training weight where it will work well for you. Or you can always give your cat a small meal and come back a little later to train. I often let my cat come to me as she will stand at my office door quietly and when I turn to see her she will run as fast as she can to the training room entrance letting me know she wants in to train. I usually will then get up and do a couple repetitions and then go back to work.
If your cat seems to be unfocused and uninterested in the training often, you may need to wait longer between when your cat eats and when you train so that it digests more and is more willing to work for food. There is a healthy motivation balance; you just have to find it.
26 OctTraveling Through The Desert With My Cat
I went back and forth on trying to decide whether or not to take my cat, Ninja, along with me on my month long road trip from Florida to Utah to California, to Texas and back to Florida. It was going to be a long month and my options were to take her along or to leave her at home alone with the neighbors checking in on her… but I knew she would be bored out of her mind!
So I decided to bring her along with, as much as she LOVES hotels and isn’t too bad about getting car sick. I actually do not give her any drugs or anything when she travels; she is very used to it and does great. She has a certain meow for needing to go to the bathroom, and a certain one for feeling sick. She also has one she does for when she’s bluffing, hehe…
I keep her litter box in the back of the truck behind the passenger seat and she eats the night before we leave but not again until we get to our location the next night. This is by her choice, not me “starving” her… she knows she will puke it up if she eats in the morning or during the trip so she waits until we stop for the night.
She loved the hotels like usual, and we only stayed at pet friendly places like Best Western and La Quinta.
For the first time I took her out with us on drives into the desert and I let her roam around on isolate roads where I knew cars wouldn’t be coming fast. I walked along with her and she LOVED rolling in the hot desert sand. She loved it so much that on this trip when she made her car sick cry, I would take her out and she would roll in the dirt and then jump back into the truck as if to tell me that the layer of dirt would keep her from getting car sick – and somehow, it did!
She had such a good time on this trip and in the desert that I am completely confident that she will be a great traveler and companion on the road with my starting this December when I tour around the east coast for a year. I’m excited to have her along. I’m sure there will be many “Cat Travel Tips” from me in the future.
07 OctBeginner Cat Training Video
So far I’ve trained my cat to:
- Learn what a clicker is
- Touch train (also known as target training)
- Come on command
- Sit on command
- Stay on command
- Sit up/sit pretty
All those in 3.5 weeks! My cat loves training so much she keeps beating me to the “training room”. I set up everything for her in there, which is where this video was taken… I used a little coffee table we weren’t using and she trains on that. It acts as her “station” for training which is really nice. You don’t have to use a station, or a “platform” to train your cat but I chose to.
Here is sort of my training chart of how fast Ninja was able to learn each behavior (this won’t be everyone’s cat’s chart, but it is nice for me to look back and see how long each trick took. Your cat may learn faster or slower):
- In a single training session she learned what the clicker meant. She had had experience with it prior, though, so your cat may need longer.
- A single training session and she understood touch training/target training.
- 1 day of 2-3 training sessions to learn come on command (short distance).
- 3 days to learn sitting on command.
- 5 days to teach her sit up/sit pretty.
- 2 days to learn stay on command.
All these behaviors were super basic. The touch training can be done with her at any length but the come command was trained at short distances (though it worked outside from our backyard as well as within our house)
The stay command I only asked from the distance of a room and for the length of a few seconds, not a lot of minutes or hours. I don’t have a need for her to sit in one place for an hour but ALL these behaviors can be expanded upon once it’s basis is learned.
And the training doesn’t stop here! I plan on working on some fun jumping behaviors next so stay tuned with our progress!