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| Understanding And Training Your Cat or Kitten |
| Preface |
| Charles F. Kettering, industrial scientist and inventor, said, "There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: You can know a lot about something and not really understand it." I hope this book will help you understand, as well as know, your feline companions. If you increase your awareness of yourself in the process, consider that a bonus. A few years ago I decided by open a house-call veterinary service for cats, not because I had a wealth of knowledge, but because I like cats, |
| and liking is the first step toward understanding. At the same time I wrote pet-related advice columns that appeared in several national magazines and my local newspaper. I learned about and increased my understanding of cats by observing them in their home environments, talking to pet owers who were clients, and hearing from readers of my columns. I came to believe that cats are naturally smarter than dogs, which I treated on rare occasions. If I administered an injection to a canine patient and returned the next day for follow-up care, the dog had usually forgotten or forgiven me. If I saw a cat in the same situation and returned the following year, the cat was hiding under the bed or behind the couch. Cats remember! Although cats are reported to be solitary creatures, I found that most of the pampered felines I encountered in my practice thrived on attention from their human caretakers. Many owners and cats interacted with one another through daily play, which included the teaching and learning of simple tricks. One of my favorite patients was an overweight Siamese named Bubba, who lived with a littermate, Sissy, and a doting owner, Dorothy. On my first visit to Dorothy's house, she showed me a bell at the bottom of the back-door frame; Bubba swatted this bell with his paw when he wanted to go into the backyard. I marveled at both Dorothy and Bubba's ingenuity, and wondered who had trained whom. Dr. Louis J. Camuti, who operated a hosue-call veterinary service for cats in New York, had a theory about cat training. Dr. Camuti believed that cats trained their owners. For example, a cat may teach his owner that a twitch of the tail means "follow me" or "where's the tuna." I think we have a lot to learn about authentic living from observing cat behavior. Cats are innately blessed with the ability to be themselves. Have you ever seen a cat that crawled into your lap and purred, just to please you? No, cats please themselves. They don't suffer from that wasted human emotion--guilt--and are uninhibited in expressing their emotions. Although cats don't have many of the personality hang-ups we do, they are very susceptible to stress. A cat's response to stress is directly influenced by his family history and early conditioning, plus his encounters with people, other animals, and situations in the environment. A cat may react to stress with inappropriate or aberrant behavior, or may respond with behavior we consider weird but which is normal if you are a cat. The trick, of couse, is to know the difference between normal and abnormal feline actions, and to understand the motivation behind your pet's behavior. Motivation is the key to effective training or retraining. Castrating a tom removes his inclination to roam in search of females; changing the litter more frequently entices the fastidious cat to use his litter box; and offering a tidbit of tuna after correct performance of "fetch" answers the cats basic question: What's in it for me? Writing this book has increased my knowledge and understanding of patients, clients, and myself. I hope that this offering of personal experiences, my own and that of others, and research in the field of animal behavior enhances your understanding and training of the cats that share your life and home. That is what's in it for us. We're not so different from cats, after all. |
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| H. Ellen Whiteley, D.V.M., All Rights Reserved |
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