The next tricks I taught her were:

1. Jump up (onto objects I point to)
2. Jump from point A to point B
3. Jump through a hoop
4. Spin on command
5. 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.

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.