How to teach a cat to speak, lay down

Biologically, dogs basically domesticated wolves. In the wild, their survival is based upon cooperation. Dogs recognize leaders and follow. Cats on the other hand, are more solitary animals. They don't recognize the alpha male like the canine, so it is harder to teach them to do things on command. Some think it is impossible. I watched a Thomas Edison movie from the 1890s that featured trained, boxing cats. If a cat could be trained to box, why couldn't it be trained to speak? Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. It is possible to train your cat to do certain things besides use the litterbox.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Yourself.
• A little time each day.
• A cat.
• Lots of patience and understanding.

1. Start young if possible. If your cat is young, that's great! If not, don't give up all hope. It will help if your cat is vocal -- if it meows loudly when it is hungry, for instance.
   
   Do remember cats are not dogs, this will take time. This is geared for friendly, vocal cats. It will be very hard to train a cat that doesn't love to be petted.
2. Start the training by meowing at the cat when the two of you cross paths in the house and make eye contact. Just make a quick, sharp meow followed by a look in the eye. Each time the cat meows back, pet its head as a reward.
3. Try not to let the cat train you. Once you have the cat associating meows with petting, it will meow without any command in hopes of being petted. When it does this, wait a few seconds and give a meow of your own. When it answers, pet the cat's head.
4. Once the cat understands that it will be rewarded when it answers you, you have to make the transition from saying "meow" to saying "speak" without confusing the cat. I did this by maintaining the same body language and quipping the word "speak" the same way I had said "meow."
5. Once the cat is trained to speak (you should be able to have it answer a speak command 90 percent of the time) you can try the "lay down" command, if your cat likes to have its belly scratched.
   When you pet the cat on the head (after it has spoken), try petting its back and apply very light, downward pressure with a finger to encourage it to lay down. Do not force the cat down, just encourage it to do so with a little pressure. Whenever the cat lays down, say "lay down" as it is doing so, then scratch its belly, or whatever it likes.
6. Unlike a dog, the cat will not always perform on spoken command. If it speaks at least 90 percent of the time, I'd consider that a success.