Training Your Cat to Listen

Cats do not react to discipline, as your dog will. Cats cannot be trained with dominance in mind. Cats are social and only interact in a social group manner. Physical punishment does nothing for a cat and only causes them have fear. Never hit a cat.

You can train your cat to have appropriate behaviors by redirecting bad ones into a good one. If you train your cat to have appropriate behaviors, you will most likely find that they do not do the unacceptable ones.

Cats do not like surprises, so if you’re cat is acting inappropriately, all you have to do is make a lot of noise and surprise them. Use clapping, a firm voice, hissing or squirt the cat with water. For these types of “discipline” to be effective the sound really needs happen almost at the same time the cat is doing an unwanted behavior. It is imperative that you are right on top of the behavior when it happens, otherwise the cat will not put two and two together.

You never want to rub the nose of your cat as discipline. If the cat is biting at you, push your palm against their nose. They do not like that and it is a good way to show them that it is not acceptable to bite.

There are always going to be some behaviors that you can’t train or change. For example, you may never be able to break your cat from clearing the counters because you are not always there to catch them in the act. If this is the case, you are better off ensuring that there are lids on all food containers and that there is nothing on the counter that the cat would want to knock off. Keep all of your breakables out of reach.

You may also need to “catproof” your house in general.