How to “beat” a cat into submission (2)

How to “beat” a cat into submission (2)

How to educate correctly

Reinforcement is the main method, and punishment is only used occasionally as an auxiliary method. Some mistakes can be reinforced, and some need to be punished, but the method of punishment is not the use of force.

1: Reinforcement method:

Reinforcement is to increase the possibility of a behavior happening again by increasing the animal’s needs for certain things. This is suitable for correcting some bad behaviors of cats, such as cats like to meow, cats like to disturb you at work, or to cultivate some skills of cats: coming at your call, shaking hands, sitting, lying down, and even skateboarding, etc.

Example 1:

How to correct the bad habit of cats disturbing your work mentioned in the previous article:

Set the scene: When the cat comes to disturb you, scratches you with its claws, sits in front of you to hinder your work.

Step 1: Resist the urge to touch it and talk to it.

Step 2: “Move” yourself away, don’t let him touch you and keep quiet.

Step 3: Move all the work supplies to the side and observe whether the cat will follow you. Step 4: If

the cat follows you, repeat the above steps .

Step 5: If the cat does not follow you, once the cat sits quietly and no longer disturbs you, immediately start petting the cat. The frequency should be relatively frequent at the beginning, so that the cat can be rewarded for sitting and staying sitting.

Step 6: Gradually increase the interval between petting, so that the cat can slowly learn to stay quiet and sit for a long time.

Example 2: Training a cat to come when called

① Start with training to sit. When the cat sits, give him a snack and then walk away a few steps. If he still wants to eat, he will follow you and give him a snack when he sits again.

② When the performance is successful, increase the distance you walk away until you can ensure that he can still follow you when you are far away.

③ When he can continue to run to you and sit, you can add a command. When he finishes eating the snacks from the previous stage of training and is ready to follow you, immediately say the command: Cat, come here.

④ The next step is to increase the distance he runs to, such as the distance across a room.

2. Non-violent punishment method:

Punishment that does not require force means removing the things that the animal needs to reduce the occurrence of behavior.

For example: When a cat likes to scratch your legs to try to get something, you only need to remove the snacks as soon as the cat raises its claws to give it a signal: scratching your legs will not be able to beg for snacks.

For another example, when a cat regards your hand as prey, walk away immediately and leave the cat there, letting it get bored. When the cat calms down, play with the cat teaser and tell it that the cat teaser is the “prey”.

Finally, when everyone is educating cats, remember one thing: humans use language and conversation to communicate, while animals focus on body language or positive or negative results to communicate. Therefore, when training our cats, we must understand our actions more, not language. We must also observe the cat’s body language.