I am a few days into training my cat and things aren’t going too well. She has been sick all over the carpet and her blanket. My attempts at making her perform simple tasks are met with bafflement and tail flicking. The custom-made toys I have crafted for her are summarily ignored. At one point, she starts chewing on the copy of the training book I’m using, looking me in the eye as if to say: “Just you try.”
The book in question is The Trainable Cat by biologist John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis, a feline behaviour specialist at the charity International Cat Care. The duo’s BBC Horizon programmes, The Secret Life of the Cat (2013) and Cat Watch (2014), aimed to demystify cat behaviour and their new book sets out detailed instructions on how to help cats deal with the sources of stress inherent to life as a pet: trips to the vet, visits from strangers and new and potentially upsetting situations such as moving house or the arrival of a baby.
After dogs, cats are the UK’s second most popular pet choice, with 17% of households owning one or more of the 7.6m cats in the country. Yet they are seen as mysterious and unpredictable; it’s not a coincidence that sphinxes are symbols of inscrutability. Cats, we are told, are independent creatures and, as a result, owners largely leave them to their own devices.
Bradshaw and Ellis, however, are on a mission to educate the public to better understand their pets’ mentalities. Ellis instinctively knew cats could be trained even as a child – one childhood cat would jump on to her shoulder on command and balance there while she walked – but it wasn’t until she was working as a post-doctoral researcher in feline welfare and attended a colleague’s puppy training classes that she realised many of the same principles could apply to cats, too.
“Lots of people haven’t even thought about training a cat,” says Ellis, who has come to visit me for a training demonstration on my cat, Betty. “But they do have lots of challenges in their lives with their cat, like trying to get them in their carrier or giving them a tablet.” Cats are creatures of habit, unnerved by the smallest things (my cat has recently been startled by a piece of paper falling to the ground, or a chair being moved to a different room) so more significant changes can be traumatic to them.
A high proportion of cats are therefore stressed, exhibiting behaviour such as scratching, aggression or urine spraying. “I’ve seen first hand and spoken to so many clinical specialists and vets who say many cats are stressed,” Ellis adds. Although cats can be taught tricks such as “sit” and “stay” (Ellis taught one cat to roll over when she pointed her finger and said: “Bang”), the main point of training, as set out in the book, is to enhance the animal’s wellbeing. Because the cat’s understanding is limited – you can’t explain to them that a visit to the vet is for their own good – they will respond badly to situations that are actually in their best interest.
Cats are admittedly harder to motivate than dogs, but rewards such as high-value food (pure protein will do the trick), play and stroking are effective incentives. Training is best done in bursts: cats’ short attention spans mean frequent sessions of a few minutes are preferable to long, intensive ones. The cat also needs to be in the right frame of mind: relaxed yet alert, not too hungry but not too full.
If the cat performs the desired action, such as voluntarily exploring an unfamiliar object, they are rewarded. If food cannot be delivered immediately, a verbal marker (such as “good”) is used to buy time to get the reward; over time, the cat will associate the word with treats. One of the initial exercises is getting the cat used to a “relaxation blanket”, on which they learn to relax, sleep and play and which is then used to make them more comfortable with the other exercises.
My cat isn’t keen on having new visitors: normally bold and inquisitive, she’ll rush under the duvet and wait for hours until the intruder is gone. So when Ellis comes round with a photographer and a publicist, unsurprisingly, Betty scurries away and hides. I eventually coax her out with some cooked chicken breast (a rare treat for her) and Ellis instructs the guests to avoid direct eye contact – a sign of aggression in cats – and to ignore her while occasionally throwing her bits of food; reaching out and touching is not allowed.
Within minutes, she is much more at ease around strangers than usual: she inspects bags and shoes and wanders up to people’s feet (usually even this takes several hours of gradual familiarisation). At this stage, we can start the training proper: the cat carrier. Betty’s few experiences with this have been trying, to say the least: once was to get her spayed, while another time she was being so difficult we wrapped her in a blanket and stuffed her in (definitely not the right thing to do). As a result, whenever it is taken out she sprints out of the room at full speed.
In preparation, I have thoroughly washed it to remove any negative scent traces she may have deposited in previous trips, removed the top part, put the relaxation blanket inside and fed her treats in it. Ellis guides me through a training session. Whenever Betty inspects the cat carrier of her own accord, she’s rewarded with praise and food, which is hidden in Ellis’s hand, while any other behaviour is ignored. Betty is initially confused and frustrated, but with a little luring she soon starts to make the link between the carrier and food. By the end of the session, she is comfortable inside the carrier and later that evening, hours after any treats, she has gone for a nap inside it.
Ellis recommends counterbalancing negative experiences with positive ones: for example, taking trips in the cat carrier that result in a happy outcome such as a meal can balance out unpleasant associations. “I imagine it a bit like weighing scales,” says Ellis. “It’s always keeping as many positive experiences as possible, so when you have to do the one bad one, it only knocks it a little bit. We can’t teach them that an injection is really nice but we can make sure they’re not scared of the bits before so they cope better when it does happen.”
Perhaps the most important difference from training dogs (and children) is that cats don’t learn from punishment or scolding: their short-term memory is poor and they are unable to make the causal link between action and punishment. They respond well to rewards-based training, but any harsh words – or the water spray that is sometimes recommended to discourage bad behaviour – will be negatively associated with the owner rather than the habit.
“If you treat them badly they really will dislike you,” says Ellis. “It’s related to the fact that they evolved from a solitary species. Children and dogs are highly social, so that need to be part of the group almost acts like a protective buffer, whereas a cat would pack its bags and leave.” Dogs and children are therefore more tolerant of punishment and in extreme cases will still stick to owners or parents who are abusive towards them; cats would not be so forgiving.
If a cat is displaying unwanted behaviour, then owners must provide an alternative outlet for it. If it is scratching the furniture it may be that its scratching post is too small, while if it is biting hands and feet it may not be getting enough play. Habits such as jumping on counters can be discouraged by silently picking them up and putting them down again, every single time they do it. Ellis explains: “You have to put that behaviour on what we call an ‘extinction schedule’ so that it is no longer rewarded. It’s annoying for us, but very quickly they will learn there is no point jumping up because they will just be put back down.”
However, not all behaviours can be eradicated, so it’s helpful to have an understanding of the ways cats have evolved through time. The hunting instinct, unpleasant as it may seem to many owners, is healthy for cats as without it they would not survive in the wild. This is why many cat toys mimic prey – small and furry ones resemble mice, feathery wand toys are like birds – and playing with them helps satisfy that urge.
Smell is also vitally important for cats: in unfamiliar situations, humans tend to concentrate on visual aspects, while for cats smell is the first port of call. When moving to a new home or getting the cat used to objects they find threatening, Ellis recommends using cat pheromone sprays or collecting the cat’s scent using cotton gloves and stroking them on their scent glands, which are around the chin and ears, and then rubbing the glove on to the object.
The ease of training will depend on the age of the cat, its personality and past experiences – a kitten will learn more quickly than a nine-year-old cat, which will be more receptive than a 16-year-old cat – but Ellis says training can improve the life of any cat.
The idea of cat training is starting to gain traction, especially among vets, and Ellis hopes the public will soon follow. “People have become much more bonded to their cats,” she says. “They have gone from being mousers and ratters to sleeping on their owners’ beds. And I think people are starting to realise they have a responsibility to these animals.”
In addition to improving the cat’s welfare, the training enhances the relationship between owner and animal. “Before I trained my cat, Cosmos, he’d be off all day, hunting or whatever he was doing,” says Ellis, “But when I started training him he hung around a lot more. Our relationship, which I thought was good, suddenly became a whole lot better, because he wanted that relationship as much as I did.”
It’s amazing what a few treats and perseverance can do. In a week, Betty has gone from running at the mere sight of the cat carrier to sleeping in it at any given opportunity. Instead of trying to attack the grooming brush, she actively enjoys being brushed and demonstrates this with copious purring. She still goes up on the kitchen counter, but not as insistently. She has to some extent mastered “sit” and “stay”. Overall, she seems calmer and more affectionate. And though the training book is now rather dog-eared, the cat has left it mercifully unchewed.
The Trainable Cat by John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis is published by Allen Lane (£20). Click here to order a copy for £16.40
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