Determine What Behaviors are Natural for a Cat in Training

"Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan, I own Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic, and I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk to you about cat obedience. Hello! Now we are back to our training of cats, training of cats being the most difficult subject that you will have ever asked anyone about; and the big thing about cats is that they have certain natural behaviors, and you are not going to make a cat not be a cat. It is always going to act like a cat; and cats need to hunt that is natural. They need to catch prey. They need to sharpen their claws for catching prey. They need to form a hierarchy with their fellow cats. They need to chase and capture, and they need to sleep, and they need to eat and they have all these basic needs. So when these needs interfere with your life, you either have to learn to live with them, or you have to divert them to places that is okay to do. So just as one little example, as I close this, if a cat is like running along and attacking your feet, which is something cats sometimes do, you can do two things, one you can discourage it by using a compressed air can or a squirt bottle, so when they do that you spray them and/or you can roll a little ball or a little mouse so that they are directed now, rather than attacking your leg to attacking the thing that it is moving off into the distance. So redirecting behaviors that are normal for cats is the only way to truly change a cat’s behavior to where you can live with it."