Cat owners often have problems with their cat's behavior. This might be scratching furniture, meowing too loudly or the bringing of unwanted "gifts" to the doorstep or kitchen floor. Some despair that training their cat effectively is next to impossible. New pet training methods focus on the rewarding of positive behavior and cats can definitely respond to this. Click training can help to teach your cat to consistently repeat desired behaviors and reduce the unwanted ones. An example of this is ignoring the cat while it is standing over the dead bird on the kitchen floor and rewarding it for playing with a ball or toy immediately afterwords.
To do this effectively you need to ignore the cat while it is standing by the unwanted gift. It is important not to shout at it and tell it you don't want dead birds in your kitchen. As soon as the cat moves away introduce the toy and give the cat plenty of praise and attention. The problem here is that you may not always have an appropriate toy available. This is where click training can really help. Clicks can be made with easily available clicker devices from pet stores. The idea is that the cat will learn to associate the sound of the click with a positive reward.
Of course it will take a little while for your cat to learn this connection, but it can be done. You need to start the click training slowly but consistently. Start by matching the sound of the click with a reward. The reward should be one of your cat's favorite treats. This does not need to be linked to any particular behaviour at first; you just want your cat to link the sound of the click with the reward. You need to repeat this stage plenty of times so your cat always associates the sound of the click with a treat, to the point that when you press the clicker he comes and looks for the treat.
You should see quick results with the first stage and be quite convinced of your cat's ability to learn and make connections. The great thing about click training is that you can now link what your cat has learned to specific behaviors. So when your cat behaves in a way that you want it to you can click and reward. If it behaves in a way you don't want it to then ignore it. Gradually you will encourage your cat to behave in these positive ways for more of the time.
