How Do I Train My Cat to Do Tricks?

Video Transcript

"Hi, we're here today with Littlebit, and we're just going to introduce you to the very basics of how to teach your cat to do tricks. The great thing about teaching your cat to do tricks is it's a wonderful opportunity for bonding, and it let's the cat exercise their brain. So what I've got here is called a target stick, and I'm just going to dip it in this little bit of freeze dried chicken, just to get it smelling really interesting. What we're going to try to do is get her to touch the stick. There we go. Every time she touches the stick, she gets a click and treat. The idea behind this is if you can train her to touch the target stick, you can train her to touch anything that you put the target stick on, or move anywhere that you put the target stick. We'll offer her the target stick again to touch, and as soon as she touches it, we want to click it. Now she sees the treat, and so she's thinking, oh yeah, that's what I really want, but she's not going to get the treat unless she touches her nose to the target stick. And cats intuitively will reach out to touch the target stick. So what we're going to do now is the next step, is we want her to jump from one chair to the other. So she knows about the target stick, so now we've got the target stick over here. Let's see if we can get her to jump over to touch the target stick. Littlebit, jump, jump. Very good. So you see, we led her across with the target stick. The target stick is still the target, but we're getting her to jump across. Littlebit, Littlebit, Littlebit jump. Littlebit, jump. Littlebit, jump. There we go. Let's see if we can get her to do the whole jump, all the way across. It's not that far Littlebit. Ready? Littlebit, jump. Good cat. Good girl. That was very good. So the next step in having some real treat fun is the hoop. Let's see if we can get her to jump through the hoop. Let's move these chairs a little bit closer together. Now this is where it's really handy to have three hands, but you can hold the clicker and the treat in the same hand, or actually, I think I'm going to hold them this way. Littlebit, here honey. Littlebit, jump. Good girl. And there you have your trick."