Many people believe that cat training is too difficult, and often let their cat’s behavior problems continue based solely on this fact. The idea that cats are too hard or too stubborn to train, is just simply not true. They may not be as easy or as willing to comply as dogs might be, but training your cat is not an impossible task, in fact, it isn’t even very difficult if you go about it in the right ways.

Now, when referring to cat training, I don’t mean teaching your kitty to do tricks. There is nothing wrong with teaching your cat tricks, but the focus of this article is on training your cat to behave properly in your home.

The best cat training technique is to use positive reinforcement to encourage good behavior. You will see much better results using positive techniques, rather than punishing, scolding, or yelling at your cat for bad behaviors. Keeping that in mind, you should NEVER hit or smack your cat. When you have a misbehaving cat, frustration is inevitable, but physically punishing or yelling at your cat will only worsen the situation.

Positive reinforcement will give you the best results while training your cat. This just means to reward your cat for a good behavior. Giving them a treat or giving them extra affection after they have done something right will encourage them to continue this good behavior.

Another technique is incremental training. In addition to positive reinforcement, this technique can be very successful. A possible situation where these techniques could be utilised together is when attempting to train your cat to use the human toilet or training them to go to the bathroom outdoors. Slowly moving the cat’s litter box to where you eventually want them to use as their bathroom, whether it’s the toilet or outdoors, is an example of incremental training. In addition to using this incremental training technique, positively reinforcing your cat each time they use their litter box after you move it will encourage them to continue to do this until they are using the toilet or the outdoors.

Cat training can be a very important aspect of your relationship with your cat and won’t always be easy. When you use positive techniques and reward your cat for good behaviors, rather than punish them for bad ones, you will start to see the results that you want. Show your cat that you appreciate their good behavior and you will find that training them is fairly simple.

Article by: Cortney Martin