Temple Grandin, in association with Catherine Johnson, in their book “Animals Make Us Human” agrees with me and other PoC supporters and regulars (who are very important to this website in getting the message across) that..
“…you can’t train a cat using punishment and negative reinforcement….”
Click on this link if you’d like to see the page I wrote a long time ago. My page is not scientific. It is based on common sense but I am pleased someone in authority and who is respected in the animal and cat world supports my argument. This is important because a lot of writers on cat behavior on the internet and in magazines encourage what can only be described as cat punishment. There are manufacturers making devices which are totally based on cat punishment. These people and businesses are very short-sighted and ill-informed in my view.
Temple Grandin writes that as cats are essentially less domesticated than dogs, horses and cows they react to negative reinforcement as a wild cat would. The wild cat ancestor – the African/Asian wildcat – is lurking just under the surface of the domestic cat. Wild cats do not react well to negative reinforcement.
Temple Grandin refers to Karen Pryor, who describes how wild animals react to punishment or someone trying to force them to do something. One example she uses refers to is otters:
“Put a tame pet otter on a leash, and either you go where the otter wants to go, or it fights the leash with all its might….”
Temple Grandin spells it out:
“The only way to train a wild animal is to use positive reinforcement…”
A cat should be trained by rewarding him for doing things you want him to do. It is interesting that traditionally the training of animals is by negative reinforcement no matter how mild the “punishment” might be. The ubiquitous form of negative reinforcement for a companion animal is the lead and collar around a dog. Pulling on it creates discomfort, which prevents the dog from pulling.
People who want to train their cats (not many because most of us are happy to be trained by our cat) should remember that the domestic cat, even the docile flat faced Persian who is indoors all the time, is not that different from any of the wild cats.
Nicholas Dodman calls the domestic cat, “a miniature tiger in your living room”. And Mel and Fiona Sunquist in their master work The Wild Cats Of The World say the following, on page 104, about the domestic cat:
“Though cats have been domesticated for some time, they quickly and easily revert to the wild or feral state….”
There you have it. Domestic cats are wild at heart and is not advisable to train wild cats by punishment. Let’s stick to far more effective and humane methods if we want to train a cat. Personally I wouldn’t bother. Just let things happen naturally and you’ll train your cat to a certain extent without even knowing it is happening and vice versa. Cats train us gently too.
The only thing that punishment teaches, is fear of more punishment.
Nothing can be truly learned whilst in a state of fear.
This is a basic tenet of humanist based teaching. It’s true for all species. Good to see it’s being promoted here, but I wouldn’t expect anything else from PoC!
Good piece.
How I agree!It angers me also when anyone says I only have to sternly say NO to my cat and it behaves.
If saying NO worked then the word wouldn’t need to be said would it.
Cats do not misbehave,they behave as cats and that’s the beauty of them to me.
I don’t punish my kids,my cats,or my dogs,I kindly showed them the error of their ways by removing them from anything they shouldn’t be doing the first time they did it and they stopped doing it.
Exactly, it’s instinct not to punish for those of us who are still in touch with some more truthful part of our own nature. It doesn’t even come naturally to punish a cat or human. I couldn’t do it without feeling like a total ass. It’s a constructed strategy and it’s awful and desperate and works the wrong way. Relationships are more important than control. I’d rather lose my couch than my relationship with my cat and I can’t believe somebody who doesn’t get that. Sometimes Lilly goes so hard on my couch I can’t help but giggle – it’s total massacre and it’s a nice couch, but whatever man, it’s funny to even think of trying to stop her. You are right when you say “it’s no way to treat a cat”.
I got the cane in boarding school in England. I didn’t realise they had abolished it but that was in the late 80’s so maybe things have changed.
If you punish a cat the cat is going to think you don’t like it, and not make the connection that it has anything to do with what it feels is natural to do anyway. The cat might end up making the connection and then will think ‘the human is mean to me when i’m having a stretch’ – or some such. Absurd really.
Well allellulia, what we have been preaching for years has at last been endorsed by someone people might take notice of and I hope all of them who shout at their cats, growl at them, squirt water at them, scruff them, time out them, hit them and all the other unkind and sometimes even cruel things they do to them, read this article.
This is the second thing, after declawing, which makes me very angry and sad that some people and their ‘advice’ cause cats all the world over untold misery, but most won’t admit it.
Anyone who can’t teach a cat acceptable behaviour, purely by kindness and patience, should not have a cat!
I would love to have a writer from Asia, write for PoC about the world of cats in Asia. Asia is very important in the world and becoming more westernised so there are more domestic cats in that part of the world.