Smart Cat Tricks

Just as Fields-Babineau trained Chewy, you can train your cat to perform useful or entertaining tricks. We often consider cats to be such independent thinkers that we refer to these seemingly impossible feats as being improbable and "like herding cats." But felines are actually quite trainable.

Fields-Babineau, based in Amherst, Va., says cat training always involves these components:

• Your Positive Reinforcement: It helps to have a clicker for this, they advise, since you can offer food rewards tied to the sound of the clicker. You can find inexpensive clickers at pet stores. As your cat learns to do a trick on cue, the need to click will lessen and occasional rewards should suffice.
• Your Patience: Training builds gradually, with a number of repetitions and small steps toward a final goal.
• Your Quick Reaction: Cats respond more quickly than dogs to something that's rewarding, so you want to reinforce behaviors quickly.
• Your Cat's Sense of Fun: "Do not ever force a cat to do anything," says Marilyn Krieger, a Redwood City, Calif., cat behaviorist whose cat, Olivia, closes doors on cue.

Cats are most trainable when they're kittens. "Make them work for you when you feed them," says Fields-Babineau. But cats of any age and any breed can be taught tricks. It does help to understand the nature of your cat. For example, she finds that Bengals are more receptive to active tricks, like jumping, while Persians and Himalayas do well with passive tricks, such as staying. Bengals tend to move more, explains Fields-Babineau, while Persians and Himalayas tend to be more subdued. Here are three basic tricks your cat might master:

Come
Your cat comes when you pop the top on a can of cat food, but will the little darling come when you want it to? Teaching your cat to come is a useful trick, not to mention that it could win you the respect and awe of visitors who think that you've become some sort of cat whisperer.

The key, says Fields-Babineau, is to break down this and other "tricks" into small parts. To teach your cat to come, start by holding a tasty morsel of a favorite food under its nose. Move the food 4 to 5 inches away to draw your cat to you. When your cat moves forward, deliver the reward and either click or say, "Yes," or, "Good." Repeat four or five times before you move farther away, at a distance of around 10 inches from your cat.

Most cats can learn to come from a short distance in five minutes or so, says Fields-Babineau. "Within a couple of weeks, you could have a cat coming to you from over 20 feet away."