Cat Clicker Training or What My Kittens Will Do For Treats

I'm not sure how I got the idea of clicker training cats in my head. Or even training cats to begin with. So I'll start this story with my Google search for 'clicker training'. Of course I immediately found Karen Pryor's website for clicker training dogs, cats, horses, whatever animal you want to train. But more importantly, she had clicker training gear. I ordered the beginner cat training set that comes with an instruction book and a clicker. I went and picked out some suitable treats (small bits so they don't get full too quickly and different from their regular cat food so it seems more like a treat) from the pet store. I ended up with Wellness brand jerky treats that fit the bill. And judging from Ka and Zaia's motivation, they really fit the bill.


As soon as the instruction book arrived, I devoured the beginning pages. It did start off with the benefits of clicker training (like closer connection to your cats, another way of communication and mental stimulation for both owners and cats) but I skimmed through that and headed straight for how to get started. The first step was to have them associate the click sound with something good happening, i.e. treats. That may have taken 0.5 seconds but I wasn't timing. Next, we tried target training. I held out a chopstick and click/treated them when they touched it. It was maybe a minute later that they were following me and chasing the stick around so that they could touch it and get a treat. Apparently I made a bit of a mistake here in that I rewarded any sort of contact with the target when I should have just rewarded nose touching. We're retraining this now. Zaia gets it better than Ka. He'll still raise his paw to grab the target and bring it closer faster.

I noticed a few things during this process. The first is that they both learn amazingly quickly. Ka is more persistent in learning. I call him our Puzzler and can almost see his little brain pondering new things to try. He's figured out that doing something to knobs, whether they're doors or cabinet pulls, makes them open. He hasn't quite figured out what he needs to do to actually get them to open, but we'll find him trying every now and then.

The second thing is that I look forward to our training sessions in the evenings and I'll catch myself dreaming up new things to try the next time we train. I try to make sure we keep our sessions short to leave them wanting for more so that they don't decide it's boring for the next time. But if it isn't going well, I have to talk myself out of keeping on trying until we get it. I'm a big fan of learning anyway, and during training, I'm learning how to best communicate what I want them to do so that they get it and get treats. I find it even more engaging than flipping the fishing pole with feather around for them to play with. We still do that of course, because it's good to just play sometimes too.



Things Ka and Zaia know:
-Touch nose to target (Zaia knows this better than Ka. He likes to swat at the chopstick instead)
-Come when called. Currently, we call them with 2 knocks on the floor. I think we need to move this to something better suited to outside (whistle?) eventually.
-Sit (Ka knows this better than Zaia. Actually, I'm not sure she knows this yet)