‘Cats can be trained’ and there’s a growing industry of pet professionals who can help
Claudette Nita, owner of Happy Kitty Cat Training in Toronto. Nita can teach a kitty to shake a paw and jump through hoops, but most of her work is focused on problematic behaviours such as counter surfing, aggression, and other common issues.Handout
After living together for the past 10,000 years, we might imagine that cats and humans would be pretty good at accommodating each others’ needs today. From scratching the furniture to sashaying across kitchen counters to errant toileting, however, cats appear to have little interest in conforming to human rules of domesticity, much to the frustration of their two-legged housemates. Fortunately for those struggling with an unruly feline, a growing field of professionally certified cat trainers is here to help.
Arguably, social media has played a major role in this burgeoning business. In 2018 the bowtie-wearing, hoop-jumping Savitsky Cats caused a sensation when they appeared on America’s Got Talent, and a video of their performance has since been viewed more than 44 million times on YouTube. Videos of cats who can high-five and roll over on cue are now an increasingly common sight, too.
“Many people think cats can’t be trained, but I think it changed people’s minds when social media became big, and they saw these videos of cats doing tricks,” says Claudette Nita, owner of Happy Kitty Cat Training in Toronto. Nita can teach a kitty to shake a paw and jump through hoops, but most of her work is focused on problematic behaviours such as counter surfing, aggression and other common issues.
“Cats are misunderstood. A lot of cats aren’t like dogs where you can just walk up to them, and they’ll give you kisses and love you. You have to earn it, and they have to learn to trust you,” adds Tori Schlosser, the owner of Purrsuasion Cat Behaviour and Consulting in Regina. “They don’t have the same attitude of wanting to please us that dogs have,” Schlosser says.
Schlosser, like many of her colleagues, is a graduate of the Cat Training Certification program at Animal Behavior College, a private vocational school that offers online classes to students in Canada and the United States. “Cat training has been a passion of mine for over a decade,” says the school’s president, Steven Appelbaum, who adds that enrolment has increased each year, with more than 350 graduates to date.
“The biggest challenge is getting people to understand that cats can be trained,” Appelbaum says. “When thinking about training a pet, most folks think of … obedience cues like teaching Fido to walk on a leash and come when called. While those cues can also be taught to cats, our focus is less on cues and more on behaviour modification.” A big focus of the program, he adds, is teaching cats to tolerate travelling in a crate, which is vital to making transportation to a veterinarian easier. Training can also help with trimming claws and administering oral medication such as pills.
Many cat trainers favour using a small handheld clicker device to help cats associate a behaviour – such as touching its nose to the tip of the trainer’s finger – with receiving a treat. Once a cat learns this, they can be taught to do a wide range of other things, from using a scratching post to performing tricks. “You start with a treat on your finger, and when they take it you click your clicker,” Schlosser says, demonstrating the technique with her 16-year-old “demo kitty,” Siberia. “Then you work up to not having any food on your finger.”
This type of training takes cats’ relatively short attention spans and long memories into account and contrasts starkly with long-standing conventional wisdom about how to deal with unwanted feline behaviour. “When you’re using a squirt bottle or yelling at a cat, that is breaking down your relationship and making communication even more difficult,” Schlosser says. “You’re not going to help them feel more secure and solve the concern that you’re seeing. Everything that I do is about building the relationship between cat and human.”
This trust-based approach, and the growing popularity of cat training in general, is part of a societal shift in attitudes toward cats. Despite sharing our homes for millennia, cats have typically been thought of at best as low-maintenance loners, and at worst as aloof sociopaths to whom humans represent nothing more than an easy meal ticket. In recent years, however, new research has shown that neither is true. While cats may be less eager to please us than dogs, they value their relationships with humans just as highly and desire just as much love, attention and interaction.
Despite sharing our homes for millennia, cats have typically been thought of at best as low-maintenance loners, and at worst as aloof sociopaths to whom humans represent nothing more than an easy meal ticket.Nils Jacobi/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
“I think people’s relationships with cats are changing,” says Lee Niel, an associate professor at the University of Guelph who specializes in animal welfare. “For a long time, there was a lot of training available for dogs and not that much for cats, but I’m seeing that increase as we become more interested in cats’ needs and working with their behavioural issues.”
Figuring out why a cat won’t use its litter box can be a much more complicated process than clicker-training it to boop your finger on command, Nita explains. “It’s a lot like doing detective work because you’re often addressing several issues, such as anxiety, environmental stresses and relationships with other cats in the home,” she says.
Whatever the issue they’re addressing, a large part of a cat trainer’s job is helping us humans see the world more from a feline’s perspective, and adjust our behaviours and expectations accordingly. “You should learn about them, spend time with them and do everything to create the best bond with them you can,” Schlosser says. “They’re in our lives for a short period, but we are their entire lives. So it’s our responsibility to make sure that we give them the best while they’re here with us.”
How to start training a cat (it’s easier than you think)
Training a cat is a matter of persistence, patience and lots of treats. Here are some best practices for getting started, according to Jacklyn Ellis, the director of behaviour at the Toronto Humane Society.
Click or treat
“Clicker training is a positive reinforcement method that marks the specific behaviour that you are trying to reward, and helps to supercharge your efforts. It’s not necessary to use a clicker, but it can make the whole experience easier for both you and your cat.”
Taste test
“If you don’t already know a treat that your cat likes, use a smorgasbord approach with small amounts of different foods on a plate and see which one they spend the most time on.”
Target practice
“I like to start with target training, which rewards your cat touching their nose to the end of a target like a wooden spoon. This is the foundational skill that we use to train lots of other behaviours down the road.”
Easy does it
“Don’t expect too much progress too quickly, and start small in terms of the duration of sessions. I find that cats learn better in shorter bursts, so I will do a two-minute session and then I’ll give them a break for a while, then I’ll do another two-minute session.”
