Is your cat crazy--John Wright--Chapter 5

Jennifer say:


Now it chapter 5--Can you teach a cat good behaviour? I need to emphasise what a great book John Wright had written..read it, folks...

I noticed that my counter show a number of visitors--ten, not that many, but it encouraging when i got visitors to my blog..pls post comments esp those whom are animals lovers--any animals--cows, horses, pigs..ha...

1) Cats are relatively ritualistic species that do well in an ordered and predictable environment, which describes the domestic household scene fairly well. (ppl with totally chaotic, unpredictable life styles usually choose not to have pets ore more likely to have cats and dogs with behaviour problems stemming from the instability encounted in their daily lives.)

2) Cats that are timid or neophobic (avoiding new or novel objects, ppl or sounds etc) are less likely to explode, and they are more likely to stay in one location, so they are likely to Learn less.

3) Cats are trainable ( I support wright with both my hands in the way with banner saying: YES, yes, cats can be trained, i taught sweetie to meow when i asked her if she want food and we taught her to use the loo where she aimed her pee into the water holes..without fail) Training cats is a matter of shaping their behaviour so they do things they automatically want to do or of using their natural preferences to teach them to do other things that you want them to do. Just start early if possible (or when the cat is young, like sweetie whom is onli 1 plus of age).

4) Cats are curious, they explode a lot and they like a nice high vantage point.

5) How to prevent cats from jumping on kitchen counters(God bless me, sweetie does not does this)

Set some waxed paper on the counter with ending hanging down so cat can see it from the gound

set three small mousetraps and turned them upside down on top of the waxed paper..the mousetraps were safe, commericale available for cat training.

Soon, cats will connected the waxed paper with mousetraps and will not jumped on the table even if u removed the traps.the mousetraps do scared the cat.

Leave the paper for a few days and removed it. then put it back the next day. Soon even without paper, ur cat will learn not to jump

U can replaced waxed paper with towel or anything else that the cat is not familiar with.

6) Cats scratched as they have sebaceous glands on their feets which leave an odor where the cat scratched. Scratching have many functions like:

sharpening the anteriour quadradactal claws

streatchign upward or outward with front legs

soliciting play

7) Fore-claws scratching meant that it is time to trim the cat claw but the cat rarely used the rear legs to scratch.

8) When a cat try to scratch ur furniture, u can interupt it with a NO or clap ur hands or call his/her name.

9) How to make a target area that ur cat love to scratch less desirable?

Cover the target area with something that feels different from the material you want ur kitty to stop scratching. eg plastic carpet runner. for vertical objects, use double sided tape, aluminum foil. Many cat love soft carpeting for scratching and urinating and reject hard or soft surfaces

For location less visited by ppl, wipe the scratched surface with something that smells or feels unattractive to Kitty, such as chlorine based bathroom cleaner, or petroleum jelly. or mothballs..make sure ur kitty cannot eat those stuff u place..

for hortizonal surface, consider blocking access to the location, placing on the scratched material teh cat oriented, easily set up mousetrap.

Use a electrified plastic carpet runner where a loud noise will be heard when kitty passs by.

10) Ways to make cats intersted in alternative scratching areas:

Place a new object next to inappropriate object.

Select a scratching post made from material that kitty liked. Many cats prefer tree trunks, with bark. The truck should be long enought for kitty to fully stretch up vertically.

Place on top of the scratching post a ping pong ball on a string. Pay with the cat at the post

for cats who likes a specific materials, move the new object to the desirable location.

11) One of the conditioning behaviour is that animals responds to the praise of the most recent behaviour they engaged in. So when a cat misbehaves and u asked him to stop, he stop, praise it immediately. What you are praising is the cat's stopping the misbehaviour and they seem to understand that.