Training your human to give you food - Toby shows how it is done.
Dear George,
I have trained a Japanese vet to give me food, when I jump over an obstacle. Altogether an amazing experience and one that I am very proud of. It took several days because she was so slow.
At first she failed to give me any food at all. But she did pay attention to me, so I knew there were possibilities there. When I saw her fiddling about with something that looked like a very small horse jump, I tried several different behaviours.
- I walked up to it and paused. No food forthcoming.
- I went for a little walk No food.
- I walked round it and looked at her. Still no food.
- Then inspiration struck. I leaped over it. FOOD!!
She was so excited by this, that she made little beep-beep vocalisations. Rather like Celia does after I taught her to give food when I touched her hand. These humans! With infinite patience, they can learn quite a few amusing food tricks.
Yours
Toby.
Dear Toby,
Congratulations. It is so worthwhile to purrsist in training your human to deliver food. You are, of course, right. It takes days of effort because human are really not as bright as cats. We have to keep trying and keep our patience.
Food placed in a bowl, even food left available all the time, or stolen food - these are the agreeable aspects of living with a human. But sophisticats go for something rather more cerebral. They train their humans to deliver food on command.
The command you need is not a vocalisation. It is a piece of cute behaviour. Do it and you will be rewarded. You did it. Well done.
Simples.
George
Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.
This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org
Kitties would be surprised by how often this sort of things works! I've trained my human to give me treats by putting my paw in the air and letting her pat it with her hand. Then she says, "High Five" and gives me a treat. Works every time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this idea, Summer. All ideas on how to train humans are gratefully received by this blog.
DeleteI don't know if this is so much about "training your human" as it is about keeping a cat in great shape :-)
ReplyDeleteJumping back and forth for food...will definitely keep anybody in shape ....no matter how much food or treats one gets. But......is it worthy?
Diego
Diego......it is called "conditioning"!
ReplyDeleteGeorge, I really want to see Celia "conditioned" to "high five" :-)
make sure you post a video!
Hugs
Fluffy
wow, that is good stuff to see. Lost and found
ReplyDelete