Many people believe that cats either can’t or won’t learn to do tricks, but that just simply isn’t the case. Take for example the commercials you see on television about cat food; these cats have learned to do the funny and obedient things they are doing; it is not a trick of the eye! Cats are actually much more intelligent than most people give them credit for, we as pet owners just have to know the right way to teach them.
Cats are able to perform such tricks as sitting like dogs, giving high fives, jumping through hoops, begging in certain ways for food, laying down, bringing the correctly called for toy, as well as standing on their haunches, meowing when told to, among many other things like being toilet trained!
Animal trainers call the proper way of training cats “shaping”, or breaking down the teaching process into small, easier to learn steps. For example, jumping through hoops starts out with the most basic step, simply stepping over an object on the floor and being rewarded with a treat. As the cat masters this step, you can move on to step two which in this case would be raising the object slightly off of the floor and having the cat repeat what he has learned, trading the object for a hoop. Continuing the training in these small steps will eventually have your cat physically jumping through that hoop and poof, your cat has just learned to do an impressive trick!
Take a look at these videos of cats doing tricks you normally see dogs doing!
Do you have any videos of cats doing tricks? If so, email them to any of our writers and they could be featured in an upcoming article!
