Tips for leash training your cat – Part 2

Did you ever envy those dog owners always getting plenty of fresh air and physical activity along with their dog?

Well, think again, because truth is cats can also be leash trained. I have had my cat leashed trained as a kitten and we both enjoy our little evening strolls to the park.

But cat owners must be aware: kitties are independent creatures with heads of their own; you will not walk you cat, rather the cat will walk you. You must know from start that you will not be able to pull on the leash and have the cat follow you as a dog.

Pulling a cat can hurt the cat and can quickly turn a pleasurable event of going outdoors into an unpleasant experience for the cat.

Having accepted these two vital aspects, then you are ready to get your cat trained.

Leash training does not happen in one day, rather it may take up to a couple of weeks, but once you both have it down you will be walking pals for life.

It is important to choose a good harness to which you will eventually attach the leash.

Do not use a regular collar and leash; a harness is much safer and will make escaping less likely if your cat gets spooked of something.

Ideally, leash training should start when the cat is a kitten but older cats have also been able to learn rather promptly. You and your walking pal will have to follow the following instructions:

-On day 1 you want to have the cat sniff the leash and harness and play with it. Let kitty get used to the material and associate good things with it such as play, food and treats. Leave leash and harness next to kitty while kitty is eating. Then let kitty play with it again, this will prepare kitty for day 2.

-Day 2: let kitty wear the harness without attaching the leash onto it. If it bothers kitty, take it off for a few minutes and then retry later. Try putting it on right before meal time and have kitty eat with it on, he/she should hardly notice it if he/she is eager to eat as most cats are. Afterward, have the cat play with the leash while wearing the harness. Take off harness and repeat at next meal time.

Day 3 Put harness on again. Repeat as yesterday but let kitty keep it on longer and do not take off after meal. See if kitty is comfortable in it now. Continue to let kitty play with leash. Always monitor cat when wearing harness, you never know it could get caught somewhere and cause injuries.

-Day 3 Put harness on at meal time and attach leash while kitty is eating. Do not hold leash rather let the leash

Litter Training Your Cat

Cats and their litter habits can be one of the main annoyances of having a cat; it can often seem like they go to the bathroom in places other than their litter box just to get back at you, or annoy or get revenge on their owner somehow.

First of all, it is a myth that cats must be litter trained. Cats are instinctively able to use the bathroom in the litter box, but this makes other sand-like areas prone to defecation as well, and that includes rock gardens, house plants, vegetable gardens, or anything else of that nature.

Another one of the common litter-related problems that many people experience with their cats is that they tend to spray to mark their territory, and this is especially true with male cats. In order to get your cat to be as gentlemanly as possible when it comes to their litter habits, there are a few things you can keep in mind that might help your case.

1. Location, Location, Location

Where you put your litter box has a great deal to do with how willing your cat will be to use it, versus other areas in the house. Wouldn’t you rather use the bathroom in a warm comfortable area than a cold, dank one? For this reason, basements, laundry rooms and other areas are not such a great place to put the litter box.

Understandably, you probably want to put your litter box in a remote area where people can’t see it and odors are less offensive, but if you want them to use the box and not your couch cushion, you should think twice about your location.

2. Consider the Litter

The litter that you use in your cat’s litter box is another thing that must be taken into consideration. Cat litter with large granules or a certain smell or texture that your cat does not like or is not used to is a good way to discourage them from using the box at all. It may cost a bit more, but the better the litter, the more money you spend on buying a quality litter for your cat box, the more inclined they will be to use that litter box.

3. Keep it Clean

Cleaning your litter box as often as possible is the best way to get your feline to use the litter box more consistently. Think about it; do you want to use a nasty toilet? Cats are just as finicky as you when it comes to where toileting is done, and perhaps even more so.

If your cat is using other places than the litter box that is a good indication that you aren’t keeping it as clean as they would like. Consider self cleaning litter boxes that scoop waste out of the bin shortly after it is deposited.

House training your cat – Part 4

Train your pet just like you train your children: with patience. My cats at home are able to knock on the door, ask for food, and utter a wide range of suggestions. You just have to learn how to listen to them. Our cats learned how to knock on the front and back door to our home from our dog. The quickly learned how to climb up the screen door and while looking through the window, paw until the door was opened for them. My mother taught our cats to ask for food by first standing up on their rear legs, stretching their front paws upwards towards my mother and then put their hands together. Only then would my mother drop a ball of ground beef into their cluthches. After the first cat learned how to do this to beg for food, all the other cats took notice and quickly followed suit. Sleeping with cats, on the other hand, takes no training at all… just that you might find yourself sleeping more than you expected.

Cats and litter training – Part 1

When we moved house, we decided that one of our cats, whom we had adopted as a stray and who had always gone to the toilet outside before this, was going to become a fully ‘indoor’ cat as we didn’t want to risk her getting lost in the new neighbourhood. Of course, the big problem there was teaching her to use a litter box, as in the past she had always shied away from them.

We started off by getting a litter box for her exclusive use, and moved the other cat’s litter box upstairs so that neither of them would get confused over which one to use. At first she simply wouldn’t use it, preferring to go in corners of the room or on newspaper that she could tear up later to cover her ‘doings’ when she had finished. So we moved the litter box into the corner of the room she used most often and filled with with torn-up newspaper. Whenever we saw her using this makeshift litter box, we made sure to give her lots of praise and treats so that she knew that what she was doing was good.

After a couple of weeks of this, we started to put less newspaper into the litter tray and more cat litter (we used clumping so that it was easier to clean – apparently our cat thought that going to the toilet in the same place all the time was quite unhygienic and so we had to clean the litter box twice as often as with our other cat!). She didn’t like this at first but we continued to give her positive reinforcement whenever she used the litter box. Occasionally we had to lift her into the litter box if we saw her about to go in one of her old corners, but gradually she got used to the idea. Now she uses a tray filled with almost entirely cat litter and has no problems with going, as long as it’s kept clean for her.

One important tip I’d offer when litter training an older cat who doesn’t seem to have been introduced to litter boxes before is to make sure that they have their own litter tray if there are other cats in the house. At one point our other cat used her litter box instead of his own, and she refused point blank to use it again until it had been scrubbed clean and disinfected. She felt that it wasn’t her territory any more because it smelled of the other cat.

Tips for litter box training kittens – Part 7

Training a kitten to use a litter box is a lot easier than training an adult cat to use a liter box. Kittens are born with the instinct to cover up their waste, which is easier to do in soft earth, light gravel, sand or kitty litter. Sometimes this instinct only manifests as peeing in the corner and scratching on the floor directly outside of the litter box, but it’s still there, anyway. Work with it.

If You Are Raising the Litter

Perhaps your female cat slipped away for a night on the town and came back pregnant. If you are raising the kittens from birth, finding good homes for them and have an appointment to spay the Mommy cat, good for you. Whether Mommy cat became pregnant (or “in kitten”) on purpose or by accident, training the kittens to use the litter box is the same.

When they start walking fairly well at about three or four weeks old, gently pick them up and plop them in the litter box. They will sniff around and then stare at you as if you are a moron. If they can see their Mom use the litter box, this helps makes lessons a lot quicker.

Whenever you catch the kitten in the act of peeing or pooping, pick them up gently, carry them to the liter box and place them gently in there. Then, praise them for standing in the litter box, looking at you with a clearly baffled expression. Then, go clean up the mess. These are kittens. The mess will be very small.

If You Are Bringing The Kitten Home

If you haven’t raised the kitten from a newborn, you need more patience and paper towels. If you have adopted the kitten from an animal rescue, then the chances are really good that the kitten is already familiar with a litter box and what kittens are supposed to do in litter boxes. If you’ve just been given the kitten or adopted a stray kitten who followed you home (it does still happen), then you’ll have more work.

But basically, the training methods are still the same. Put squatting kitten in litter box gently. Praise. Clean up mess. Eventually, the kitten will cut out the part about having to be carried to the litter box and just go to the litter box to do his business. Remember that kittens have very small bladders and are like young children in that they don’t have muscle control yet.

Most kittens are litter trained in weeks. If your kitten seems to be having a particularly hard time of it or suddenly relapses after a long time of using the litter box please see your vet. There could be a medical condition.

Why cats are difficult to train – Part 2

Cats are difficult to train because they can somehow sense when you have an ulterior motive when you ask them to do something. Call it ESP, call it an ability to read body language, call it wahtever you want, but if you want to train your cat, you have to be completely honest with yourself and your cat. I can call my cats to me from across the room, no matter what they are doing; when they are let out into the hallway for supervised “outside” time, I can summon them to me no matter how far away they are, WITHOUT food. How? Simply by projecting the attitude that nothing would make me happier than to pet them. Cats adore being petted, perhaps even more so than having a treat.

Consistency is absolutely essential to training a cat. Once you figure out what behaviors you want, go about reinforcing that behavior EVERY time it’s displayed, and negatively reinforcing the unwanted behavior. It is not enough to simply scold or squirt the cat for doing something wrong-all that teaches is how to avoid getting squirted while doing something it’s not supposed to. Positive reinforcement is far superior to getting a good behavior out of a cat than punishment methods, but it’s far more difficult to do, because we’re so used to scolding and yelling when things go wrong, but not appreciating when things go right.

Shadow eats much faster than Tibbles, by virtue of having her teeth, so when she finishes, she saunters over to Tibbles’s bowl and starts chowing down. She is much better about sitting and waiting for Tibbles to finish than she used to be, thanks to lots of petting, lots of praise-and throwing empty bottles, boxes, spoons, masking tape rolls, what ever’s on hand, at her when she starts invading Tibbles’s bowl. This is an illustration about how positive and negative reinforcements work in tandem to get a wanted behavior.

Training a cat is made even more difficult by the fact that they are so easily bored. Their attention span, if my cats are anything to go by, is about five minutes. However, it takes about 2000 behavioral repetitions before an animal (cat or dog) learns to associate a command with an action. This means that not only do you have to consistently reinforce the behaviors you want (or don’t), you have to do it over the course of several days, if not weeks. Cats remember things readily, but you must consistently reinforce the behavior you want.

Cesar Milan is famous for saying, “Exercise, discipline, and affection,” as being the three things dogs need from their owners. Cats need consistency with the affection you show them. Consistency with the affection will make it far less likely that your cat will sulk for days after you step on its tail, or refuse to let you pick it up because it hates claw clipping. It takes a lot of discipline on behalf of the owner to train a cat, but the result-a well-trained cat that comes when it’s called, gives high-fives for a show, and loves you to pieces-is worth it.