Successful Cat Introductions

Julie Gordon All, Homepage blog, News & Events Leave a Comment

Bringing a new cat into a home with other cats? Let’s face it: cats are territorial, so you will want to be sure to introduce your cats slowly to minimize fearful or aggressive interactions. In the beginning, you will want to confine the new cat to a separate room to encourage them to get used to one another’s scent. Eventually, you will be able to progress to a controlled face-to-face meeting, allowing visual contact through a barrier, such as a pet gate, baby gate, or screen door. But how do you progress to visual contact while avoiding a stare down or confrontation? Try training!

Cat-Alyze Your Trick Training

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Trick training is usually associated with dogs, but that’s no longer the case. Cats are now joining the fun! With positive reinforcement and patience, cats can learn many of the behaviors that dogs learn. Due to their smaller size and fantastic jumping abilities, cats can learn even more! (How many dogs are small and agile enough to jump on your shoulders?)

Teach Your Cat to Follow a Target

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Imagine if you could teach your cat to go into or out of a carrier effortlessly, without physical manipulation. How about getting on or off furniture? What if you could dazzle your friends by teaching your cat to spin, rollover, or jump through a hoop? These behaviors can all be achieved by teaching your cat to follow a target stick—one of the easiest and most useful behaviors to teach!

Happy Cat Day: Fun with Shaping

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How do you celebrate National Cat Day? At Karen Pryor Academy (KPA), we celebrate by teaching our cats new behaviors, of course! Cats can be trained easily with shaping, the process of using a series of gradual steps to build toward a final behavior. With shaping, you can teach a cat any behavior that the cat is physically capable of doing, from sitting, spinning, and stationing on a mat to riding on a skateboard!

Preparing for Your Kitten’s First Vet Visit

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Anyone who has ever taken a cat to the vet knows that it can be a stressful experience for both feline and human. Just the sight of a cat carrier can send your cat into hiding! This stress and anxiety is one of the reasons that, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), cats are far less likely to go to the vet than dogs. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way!