The most effective way to discipline a cat is to reward behaviors you want to see repeated, prevent access to tempting alternatives, and redirect unwanted behavior toward an appropriate activity. Positive reinforcement can teach everyday skills such as using a scratching post, accepting brushing and nail trims, entering a carrier, coming when called, and remaining calm.
Punishment is not an effective substitute for training. Yelling, hitting, shaking, spraying with water, or throwing objects can make a cat fearful, stressed, confused, or aggressive, while failing to teach the behavior you would prefer instead.
What positive reinforcement means
Reinforcement refers to something you do that will cause your cat (or child, or chicken, yes, chicken) to repeat a specific behavior. On the other hand, punishment is something you do that will result in a behavior NOT being repeated.
When behaviorists use the terms positive and negative in reference to reinforcement or punishment, we’re not saying positive is good and negative is bad. Positive means that something is added or given (like a treat), and negative means that something is taken away (like attention).
Positive reinforcement is the most well known and involves giving the cat a nice reward for a behavior so that they are more likely to do it again. Food makes a great reward for training cats. The more often you can reward behavior with a motivator your cat enjoys, the more often you will see that behavior repeated.
Why cats can be trained
As a society, we don't think too often about training cats, and indeed many people probably think of them as untrainable. But this is far from the truth. Cats learn all the time from their interactions with us whether we'd like them to or not.
For example, they learn that when they come to sit on our lap we'll pet them, and depending on whether or not they like that, they will come to our lap more or less often. They learn that the shake of the treat packet means we'll give them a treat. And they learn very quickly that the cat carrier means an unpleasant trip to the vet.
Training your cat has important benefits. You’re stimulating his body and his mind, which helps keep him healthy. And spending time together means you’re strengthening the bond you share.
Teaching tricks can be fun and a nice bonding exercise for you and your cat, but the most important thing is to train some key life skills, such as how to go in the carrier, how to be examined at the vet, how to be brushed and have their teeth cleaned, and to come when called.
Choose a reward your cat truly values
To train a cat, you need to have something your cat likes. Although it would be nice if a cat would do something just to be told "Good cat!" it doesn't work that way (it doesn't really work that way for dogs, either, who are much more used to being trained).
There isn't that need to please, so we have to think about what really is rewarding for a cat, because it's certainly not our social attention for most cats. And when we first start training a cat that's not been trained before, the most rewarding thing generally for cats is food.
Motivation is the key to training. For most cats, it’s food. They care less about “good kitty” than about good kitty treats. Finding something that is of high value to your cat will be the most important factor when you begin to work with your cat.
Some cats love treats, some prefer a small amount of wet food on a spoon, some love tuna. It can take some trial and error, but finding the right treat can really influence the success of your training.
- Types of food to use as rewards include little bits of tuna or prawn, pieces of cat treats, or little bits of wet cat treats (available in tubes).
- Some cats who like being brushed will work for that.
- You can also use affection or sweet-talk as a reward, or even a short play session with a favorite toy.
- A clicker can become a bridge to a reward once you’ve conditioned your cat to recognize the association between click and treat.
Keep rewards small
Of course, being overweight is an issue for many cats, so it's important to use only small rewards and to take account of the calories from training when feeding your cat.
Many people think about the size of the food reward that they give, and it is so often far too big. Because we sort of think in dog terms or even in human terms, and even the size that commercial cat treats come in are far too big to be a single training treat.
So I very often recommend that if you are using commercial cat treats, use the freeze-dried ones or the semimoist ones, because you can pull them into much, much smaller parts. If we're thinking about a prawn, not a king prawn, just an average normal prawn, I would break that maybe into four or five parts at least.
Protect your fingers
Many cats are not used to taking treats from your hand and, like Melina, may try to bite or accidentally bite. To save your fingers, you may prefer to put the treat on a spoon or a little wooden stick (like a lollipop stick) or to offer wet treats from a dish or a tube.
Although I'm generally a fan of feeding animals in the position you are training them to reach, I gave up on this strategy for the sake of not getting my fingers bitten, and instead put the treat on the floor next to her.
Timing, consistency, and short sessions
Timing is everything in training your cat. Cats have short attention spans, so the reward must come immediately (within seconds) of the behavior or your cat may not know what it’s for.
For example, if you see her use the scratching post, throw some treats her way while she’s scratching and tell her she’s a good cat, but don’t throw the treats if she has stopped scratching and is starting to something else, or it’s that “something else” that she’ll think merits the reward.
It’s best to work in short stages, so the cat does not get bored or tired, and keep the level easy enough that they don’t get frustrated. Especially in the beginning, this often means working in slower increments than you expect, and for short periods of time like five minutes.
Only train for short periods at a time (15 minutes max) or your cat may lose interest. As soon as she stops responding, stop training.
Your cat may also want a break between each trial; if they spend it purring and rubbing their head on you or the surroundings, that's a nice sign that they're happy. If they choose to walk off, that is of course their choice. Try again another time, and consider trying a better treat.
The best time to train is right before meal time when your cat is most motivated by food.
Reward consistently at first
Give the same kind of reward each time your cat behaves the way you want him to, and make sure everyone in the family does the same.
Basically, you have to show your cat that you’ve got something she wants, and that there’s a way she can get it. Once she figures out what you want her to do, it’s GAME ON!
Reduce food rewards gradually
Because too many treats lead to a fat cat, your goal is to gradually wean her off the food rewards and make her settle for emotional ones such as a “good kitty,” a toss of her fuzzy ball, or a scratch under the chin.
Once your cat is displaying the desired behavior reliably, you can start cutting back on food. Give her treats three out of every four times she does the behavior, then reduce it to about half the time, then about a third of the time and so on, until you’re only rewarding her occasionally with a treat.
Continue the praise and non-food rewards. Your cat will learn that if she keeps offering desired behaviors, eventually she’ll get what she wants-your praise and an occasional treat.
Another thing to keep in mind is this: if you give a particular treat reward all the time, your cat may soon decide that she doesn’t need to do what you want her to do because she doesn’t necessarily want the treat.
What you’ll want to do is reward based on a variable schedule - don’t reward a desired behavior with a treat every single time it is performed! Maybe reward your cat’s behavior only 50% of the time (once she learns what it is you want her to do) - this actually works as a STRONGER reinforcement long-term than rewarding all the time.
Three ways to teach a new behavior
Capturing
Capturing is when you wait for the behavior to happen naturally (like a sit), and then you say the cue ("Sit") and reinforce the behavior with a treat. This is a great way to pick up some behaviors, especially if your cat has a cute little behavior you want to see more of.
Luring
Another approach is luring, when you use a treat to lure the cat into position. For example, if you want to get your cat to sit, you can put a treat in front of their nose and lift the treat up and back.
As the cat's head follows the treat, their butt will go down and they will sit. You have to keep the treat close to their nose, because if it's too far away, they will probably stand on their hind legs instead to reach it.
Shaping
You can also use shaping, where you gradually shape a behavior through lots of little approximations. Typically, you would use a clicker or another marker (such as the click from a ballpoint pen or a word that you choose to use) to mark the specific point at which you see the behavior you want, and then reinforce that behavior with a treat.
Teach the behavior before adding the verbal cue
When teaching a behavior, you often need to break it down into small steps. First help the cat understand the action, then introduce the verbal cue when the behavior is becoming reliable.
Finally it was time to start saying "Sit pretty" before making the hand signal so that she would learn the verbal phrase. This part took longer, although I know she pays attention to the words I use.
After a long period without practice, she will still sit pretty, but the hand signal is the bit she remembers best - which is perhaps not surprising as that got more practice than the verbal command.
Useful behaviors to teach
Coming when called
If you’d like your cat to come to you when you call try this: Call her name and reward her with a treat when she walks over to you; then move to another spot, call her name, and reward her when she responds, and so on.
Come when called is one of the key life skills that cats can learn. Reward behaviors that you want, and make sure the reward follows the response immediately.
Sitting and sitting pretty
Some of the most fun I have had with Melina was teaching her to "sit pretty"; in other words, to sit up on her haunches with her front paws in the air.
I had already taught her to sit for a hand signal, and from sit I used a treat to lure her backwards and up so that she was sitting on her haunches. Once she had the hang of that, I began to make the same movement but without a treat in my fingers.
I wasn't cheating her - as soon as she sat up, I gave her the treat. It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would for her to learn this position.
We did only a few trials each day, but she would come running for them. I gave her half a cat treat for each successful trial, which to be honest was probably a bit much, but it wasn't easy to break the treats into quarters and she really loved these treats.
Entering the carrier
What I also taught Harley and Melina in a far more systematic way than I had taught previous cats was to go in their cat carrier. The training had two aims: simply to teach them to love their carrier so that it would be a nice place to relax, and also so that they would go in it when I said "basket."
It makes going to the vet so much easier, and I think all cats should be trained to do it.
Providing a reward can help calm your cat during procedures she may not otherwise like, such as nail trims, brushing, going into the carrier, or being picked up.
Another type of associative learning is learning by association with events. For example, when your cat associates the cat carrier with an unpleasant car ride and an even more unpleasant vet visit and immediately runs to hide under the bed where they are out of reach, they are learning by association.
Accepting petting
If your cat doesn’t like to be petted, give her a treat for one pet, then pet her twice and give her another treat. Reward longer petting sessions with more treats, and stop the petting sessions before your cat has a negative reaction.
Pay attention to her body language and always end on a positive note!
Accepting brushing and nail trims
So to motivate your cat, you’re going to reward her with a treat every time she uses the scratching post, lets you brush her, plays nicely with you or another animal or allows you to trim her nails.
Scratch her head and tell her she’s a pretty girl at the same time, but make sure you give her that treat. Smart cats will soon link that behavior with getting treats.
Using a scratching post
You can encourage regular use of your cat’s scratching post by rewarding her each time she uses it. She’ll learn that the scratching post is pretty nice, AND she gets treats as a reward for using it!
Many perceived “bad” behaviors arise out of a biologically-evolved need - scratching, urinating and defecating, climbing, etc. - and if you don’t give your cats an appropriate way to express that need, they’ll make due with what’s in their environment.
In the case of many of my clients, a preferred behavior (e.g., clawing a scratching post) could be replacing an undesirable behavior (e.g., turning your grandmother’s antique armoir from France into match-stick sized bits of wood).
Staying calm
If you’ve been having issues with your cat yowling or being aggressive with another cat, you can reward good behavior using treats or play.
If excessive vocalization is a problem, give your cat a treat after several seconds of quiet if she has been meowing. If she’s aggressive, reward your cat when she is relaxed and peaceful in the presence of the other cat.
Accepting a different drinking place
Let’s say your cat likes to drink out of your cup of water with her paw and it’s getting a bit annoying. All you need to do is provide her with her own cup in an acceptable location (for you and the kitty), and when she goes for your glass, simply move her to her cup in a very neutral way, and then give her a treat/pets/affection/sweet talk when she uses her cup.
A word of caution, though - make sure you are rewarding the correct behavior. You need to have an interruption between the undesirable behavior and the acceptable behavior so that your cat associates the reward with the correct behavior, or you could simply be reinforcing a behavior you don’t want!
Tricks and enrichment
You can teach your cat all sorts of tricks using positive reinforcement: sit, high-five, sit-pretty, go to mat, lay down, come, up, down, jump, etc.
Just search for cat tricks on YouTube and you’ll be occupied for hours! A good book I recommend to get started is called “Clicker Training for Clever Cats” by Martina Braun.
How to replace unwanted behavior
Positive reinforcement is not just about rewarding tricks. It is also about arranging the environment so that the cat has a suitable way to meet natural needs, then reinforcing the preferred choice.
The most important thing is to find out what motivates your cat to exhibit a desired behavior and use that as a reward so that they repeat the behavior, and forget about doing the other undesirable behavior.
If you notice that your cat is going to scratch something she shouldn’t be scratching, make a noise or toss a toy in her direction (not at her directly) to distract her from what she was going to do.
When you make a noise, don’t yell because you don’t want her to associate the startling noise with you; you can clap, shake a jar of dried beans, etc.
Next, once your cat has stopped her activity because of the noise, you want to disrupt her current course of action. Redirect her to a different (or preferred) activity by using a wand toy to guide her over to the scratching post (a more appropriate choice for scratching), or engage her in a short play-session.
Once she engages in the appropriate behavior, you can reward her for that.
Prevent accidental reinforcement
Simply put, if you want your cat to repeat a behavior, reward that behavior. It’s important to make sure that you’re rewarding the behavior you want and not accidentally rewarding an unwanted behavior.
For example: when your cat meows at you, do you talk back to her or give her a treat? This is serving to teach her that if she meows at you, she gets a treat.
If you don’t reward his meowing-in other words, ignore him when he meows-he’s unlikely to become a meower. If you really like a quiet cat, reward him when he’s not meowing.
Don’t turn your cat into a beggar. Use treats only for training. If you give your cat a treat every time she paws you, she’ll quickly learn that pawing = treat, and she’ll never leave you alone.
Why punishment should be avoided
Positive reinforcement and negative punishment are reward-based methods, whereas positive punishment and negative reinforcement are aversive methods.
Negative reinforcement means that something unpleasant is removed when the cat does the behavior and as a consequence the behavior increases. This approach is not recommended in animal training because of risks to the animal's welfare.
But, for dogs and cats, positive reinforcement works very well to achieve the desired behavior, so there is no need to use a negative reinforcement approach.
Positive punishment does not teach the desired alternative
One example of using positive punishment with cats is when someone sprays the cat with a water bottle to stop them from going on the kitchen counter. This is not a good idea.
A better approach might be to provide a nice high-up space, such as a cat tree near the counter, reinforce the cat with treats for using that space instead, and stop leaving food or toys on the counter that will tempt the cat to come and get them.
For example, if you leave some fish on the counter and allow the cat to eat it, they've just been very handsomely reinforced to continue jumping on the counter.
If you punish your cat, it doesn't teach them what you would like them to do instead; and some behaviors (like scratching) are natural to cats, so it's up to you to provide appropriate ways for them to engage in that behavior.
Punishment can damage trust
Positive punishment in any form (e.g., yelling, hitting, using a squirt bottle, tossing objects directly at your cat) is ineffective and causes fear, anxiety, and stress.
Cats don’t learn from punishment unless it is applied ALL THE TIME (and trust me, you will NOT be around to catch your cat in the act 100% of the time…your cat will just learn to do the “thing” when you’re not around).
Unless punishment is applied consistently and immediately (within a matter of seconds), your cat will not associate her behavior with the punishment.
And what do you think will happen to the relationship you have with your cat if you’re punishing her all the time? That’s right, she’ll start to mistrust and fear you, which can even result in aggression.
Punishment will only serve to damage the cat-human relationship, and I know that’s not what you want.
Yelling, hitting, and shaking will only make your cat fearful and confused and could lead to her avoiding you altogether.
Do not punish after the fact
You may be sorely tempted to yell at your cat if you catch her sitting next to a broken vase or clawing the furniture, but punishing your cat after the fact is ineffective.
She won’t connect the punishment with something she’s already done and forgotten about. Instead, she’ll think you’re yelling at her for whatever she’s doing at that very moment, which might be welcoming you home from work.
Do not force the cat
Don’t pick your cat up and take her to the scratching post or litter box to get her to use them. She won’t understand what you’re doing, and she’ll probably be frightened.
Understanding consequences and extinction
If the consequences for the behavior stop happening, then the behavior will go away. This is called extinction.
An example of when you might not want extinction to occur is if you have trained your cat to come when called by reinforcing the behavior with treats, but then you stop feeding the treats (maybe you ran out of treats and forgot to buy more, or maybe you thought the cat would work for nothing and come without the reward).
Because the behavior is no longer being reinforced, the cat will stop coming when you call them.
In the process, you might get something called an extinction burst, when the cat does the behavior again and again to try and get those consequences once more before giving up.
Suppose the behavior is meowing at you for food, and you are trying to extinguish the meowing by ignoring it. You may find that an extinction burst can be very annoying!
Associative learning in everyday cat training
Cats learn in several ways, but the main ways that we use in training are types of associative learning: learning by consequence and learning by association with events.
Operant conditioning means learning by consequence when the cat is either reinforced or punished for the behavior they just did. Reinforcement makes the behavior continue or increase in frequency, and punishment makes the behavior decrease in frequency.
Negative punishment means that something the cat likes is withheld in order to decrease the frequency of a behavior. Maybe you are petting the cat and the cat bites you out of excitement, so you stop petting them until they stop biting to decrease the biting behavior.
But notice I said out of excitement (i.e., they want more), because it's also possible (even likely) that the cat is biting because they don't want to be petted anymore. In this case they are applying positive punishment to you: something unpleasant has been added (a bite) to decrease a behavior the cat does not like (petting going on for too long).
When physiologist Ivan Pavlov rang a bell and immediately gave the dogs food, the dogs would salivate in response to the food and soon began to salivate in response to the bell.
Although Pavlov's experimental use of dogs to study digestion is distressing to read about, we will just focus on the mechanisms of classical conditioning here.
How training improves difficult situations
Providing a reward can help calm your cat during procedures she may not otherwise like, such as nail trims, brushing, going into the carrier, or being picked up.
But for some cats, discomfort outweighs the joy of eating, so don’t be too disappointed if the technique doesn’t come through for you.
It's helpful to work with behaviors that are less than desirable and you can also teach fun tricks like wave and fetch, or teach him a range of useful behaviors like sit, stay and to come when called.
Positive reinforcement for good cat behavior is a great way to improve the bond between you and your cat, and let her know which behaviors are favored.