I’ve grown up with all kinds of cats. Big ones, small ones, cute ones, obnoxious ones. And I can safely tell you. You just can’t discipline a cat.
Why do I tell you this now? Because believe it or not, I have encountered people who tell me that you can discipline a cat. No you can’t.
One veterinarian in particular told us (trying to support this claim) that some people have their cats on leashes like dogs. Not spend much time in veterinary school, Doctor?
It also really is sad too. Because sometimes when people try to discipline their cats, they take it as abuse. And then they become neurotic, literally psychologically damaged for the rest of their lives.
Now, I have heard some people say negative reïnforcement, like an electrified mat, might work. But I’ve never tried that, so I wouldn’t know. You do realize though, that the cat can’t know the negative reïnforcement comes from you. It does sound a little cruel to me too.
So who disagrees with me, and thinks that they can discipline a cat?
I agree that you cannot discipline a cat, if by that you mean direct overt actions to control the cat’s behavior.
But you can use subtle, passive means to shape a cat’s behavior. It takes a lot of patience. Unlike dogs, cats do not want to please you. If your dog can figure out what you want, they will happily do it. Your cat doesn’t care what you want, at least not at first. After many months or years, your cat may come around and do something that pleases you. Maybe.
An example: if your kitten is aggressive you will not change that by meeting aggression with aggression. I NEVER tease my cats. If they swat at your hand or ankle you MUST NOT swat back, slap them, yell at them or react in kind in any way. Simply disengage. Move away. Leave the field. Or in extreme circumstances, move the cat into another room and shut the door for an hour or two.
It’s not even a question of rewarding them for unacceptable behavior. I don’t know if they get the concept of “reward,” but I know they don’t get the concept of “unacceptable.” They don’t care what you want and aren’t interested in pleasing you. Just do not engage in exchanges or transactions that you consider unacceptable.
Also, don’t take it personally. They aren’t being obnoxious just to annoy you. Or because they hate you. They’re just being cats.
You can probably “train” them after a while. But it’s more likely that they’re training you.
I’ll bite. I’m one of the ones who trained his cat to a leash. Getting him into a carrier involved too much pain and anguish(his paws, claws extended was almost as big as my hand). Nevermind what the cat suffered.
He was a smart cat, we learned together how to go for walks without a leash (there was some compromise on speed and how often and how long we would stop here and there)
I have 15 cats at current count. For the last 25 years or so I’ve never had fewer than 8 cats at any one time. 18 has been my top number.
I have leash trained cats.
I have (and do) discipline cats - and discipline does not automatically equal physical punishment.
I do train my cats. I have cats that sit on command, most of them come when I call them, they all know “get off!” (usually a counter) and “AH!” (which means whatever you are doing, stop it this instant). They are taught to sit still for claw trimming, and to have me mess with their mouths so I can medicate them. They are taught to be held, handled, and restrained. They are taught manners, basically. Some of that training includes very mild discipline and always a lot of positive reinforcement.
Now, whether they obey as well as my Labradors, no, they don’t. But they DO obey more often than not.
You can’t treat them like dogs, they don’t learn or respond the way dogs do - they aren’t wired that way. But if you work within their own framework of positive responses then they are absolutely trainable, and if you can train them you can (and almost automatically do) discipline them.
As to negative reinforcement and unpleasant discipline, that can and does screw up many a dog, and many a human too.
I’ve also had leash trained cats who enjoyed taking walkies in our fenced yard. I was never willing to risk taking them out of the yard because many people out here are idiots with dogs.
Currently we are in the process of training a kitten. We expect him to be at least 18 lbs when he’s fully grown, so have to break him of bad habits now.
This does of course include a lot of yelling NO and shoving kitten off our laps, along with the dreaded hissy can (don’t hiss at kitten, just in the air), but better he learns it now. He’s a smart guy, I’m thinking he might be a leash walking kitty, but that will be his choice. Leash walkies are for fun, afterall.
Cats are not pack animals like dogs, nor herd animals like horses.
But they aren’t completely dumb. They are hunters, and learn to hunt. They hunt food from cans, attached to people, they hunt the rattle of dry food in a box, and they can learn to hunt on a leash.
In my house I’m the trained one.
To keep howling and general bad behavior at bay I do what the Siamese demand.
If their needs are not met it’s hell on everyone in the house.
Bear and Meeko are serious about this.
I guess they are trained to training me to get them what they want when they want it.
Back when I lived in NYC, I once had a 27 lb. cat who really needed to get some exercise. So I bought a leash and harness (dog size) and carried the cat down to the street. I put him on the sidewalk and gently tugged with the leash. Nothing. I tugged a little harder. Nothing. I then noticed that we were beginning to attract some snickering onlookers. The cat would not budge. I finally got him to move, but noticed that he wasn’t walking, but had his claws dug into the sidewalk. Uproarious laughter ensued when the crowd saw his claw trail in the concrete.
I had a neighbor here in my apartment complex who I met when she was leash walking him. He had zero problems being on a leash. He also used to make me laugh because he would sit in a window and look at at me as I passed by with this look of “really? That’s what you chose to wear in public? Really!? No no, you be you; I won’t stop you.”
When I got my cat from the shelter, she would bite (although not hard enough to draw blood) and whenever she did that, I would grab her neck and yell, “NO!” Believe it or not, it worked. She’d been in the shelter twice in her then-short life, so I think she’d been traumatized at some point.
My old neighbor had two cats who would follow her out to the dumpster. It really was the cutest thing.
Just to clarify a couple of things. I know people can certainly have their cats on a leash. I’ve seen it done many times myself after all. I just meant the veterinarian’s attitude in general was kind of silly. Maybe I should’ve made that more clear.
Also, I have two rescue kitties that I believe I got in 2013 as kittens. Their mother hated humans. And cats do learn who to trust from their mother. So they don’t know what exactly to make of humans, at the present time. One is a shy gray tiger cat. The other is an all-white rather obese cat. The white one keeps biting humans. Not hard. Just to tell you who’s boss, perhaps. Actually, I wonder if she even realizes it’s wrong. Because as I said in another thread, she sometimes motions for me to give her my hand to bite. In other words, she thinks I am going to voluntarily let her bite me!
Anyways, when she does that, I don’t yell at her and I don’t swat her. But I certainly pull my hand away, so she knows I don’t like that. And it seems to be working a little at least.
There’s an important distinction to be made here: by disciplining, do we mean getting them to understand your intentions and choose to please you? or do we mean, getting them to learn a change in behavior?
I have 6 cats now and have had dozens over the years, and we get along very well. They have learned many things about interacting with me, and I enjoy this.
They don’t seem to get the idea that I have a mind with intentions. I read recently of scientific research into dogs that established dogs have a concept of human intention and cooperation with it. I don’t think cats have the capacity for this.
Cats do clearly learn from experience.
If you do something unpleasant to them whenever they do a particular thing, they’ll tend to stop doing that thing. It might be best to disconnect the unpleasantness from yourself. For example, if you can squirt them with a water pistol and hide the water pistol and look away before the cat figures out it’s been squirted, it will learn that negative consequence but not be angry at you.
I’m not going to say this applies to your cat, because I don’t have any idea based on what you’ve told us. I had a cat, and I believe I’ve read others on here with similar experience, that do “love bites”, a weird sort of cat signal of playful affection. Never hard enough to break skin or hurt, just fun and affectionate. But can also ramp up really fast into rough housing kitty style. Something for you to think about as learn about the cats in more depth
Cats are facultatively social and can be trained, most successfully when they are heavily food motivated which not every cat is (many are not). Dogs are pack animals interested in pleasing the dominant pack member and on average are much more food motivated as a group. Dogs are consequently much easier to train and can be trained for a much wider range of behaviors. And there are still a few dogs that verge on the untrainable (we generally refer to such animals as “stubborn” or even “cat-like”).
But many cats can certainly be trained in the sense of moderating their behavior in small ways. It’s just usually relatively more work for relatively smaller payoffs. A minority of cats are very trainable, but they are as uncommon as those barely trainable dogs and to some extent they train themselves.
Discourse won’t let me skew the below, but imagine the dog range should start about halfway into the cat range. Both the base and endpoint for dogs is much higher, the range much broader.
Cat Training Success Range: I----------------I
Dog Training Success Range: I----------------------------------------------------------------I
Not my impression at all. My impression is that they clearly understand that I have intentions. What they don’t do is feel required to cooperate with those intentions if they don’t agree with them. They will cooperate when they want to.
ETA: I have a doozy of an anecdote about cats and theory of mind, if anyone’s interested. It is however an anecdote, and not a repeatable experiment. Their behavior around me when I’m approaching or not approaching doors or food or bedtime, and relevant eye contact and reactions to eye contact, is repeatable; but those who don’t want to see intentions and understanding seem to generally put that sort of thing down to rote behavior.
