How I Started Cat Training

I came to cat training completely by accident. It all started with one of my first cats I had as an adult, a cat named Jalapeño. As she aged, she became more and more overweight. She stopped showing an interest in her cat toys. She groomed herself less and less. Her quality of life decreased slowly throughout the years. Eventually, at a vet visit, I was told she needed to lose weight and was given directions on how to change her food routine. I stopped leaving large piles of dry food in her bowl and instead switched to multiple, small meals throughout the day. 

At first, it was a challenge. She would pace in front of me, weaving between my legs as I prepped her food, meowing the whole time as if trying to make the entire apartment complex aware that I had not fed her! I found this new behavior frustrating and so I started to wait until she would quiet down. Eventually she did and then I would put down her food bowl. When I first started waiting for her, it might take 10 or 15 minutes for her to calm down. However, the more consistent I was with prepping her food at the same time of time and with the process of waiting for her, the quicker she seemed to calm down. Then began to notice how she’d sit by her cat bowl and make eye contact with me. I realized that we’d built a habit between us that was her sitting by her food bowl, making eye contact with me meant I put her food bowl down for her faster and consistently each morning. She’d adapted and I started to realize what that meant. Jalapeño and I had built a foundation, a bridge that increased our ability to communicate with each other. We’d started creating a language.

I immediately wanted to do more.  But how can you train cats? They’re untrainable, aren’t they?  The more I read and the more information I sought out, I learned that in fact, cats are highly trainable. Cats are domesticated so they relate and understand us humans more than we realize. They’re familiar with our body language and have already worked out ways to communicate.  I learned that any animal can be trained, you just have to build trust, figure out what motivates them and follow through consistently. So, I set out to do what I had formerly thought impossible. I was going to build a training language with my cat.

I decided my next step in my cat training and health journey was to harness train Jalapeño, after all I had built this language with her already, how hard could it be? As an untrained amateur often does, I did everything wrong. I went too fast. I didn’t listen to my cat. I got frustrated easily at my lack of progress. I set the timeline and not my cat. The list of mistakes started to pile up and I became confused and upset at how hard this seemed to be. I would put the harness on her and she’d plop over on her side immediately and not move. Sometimes I’d bring the harness over and she’d back away and I ended up almost chasing her through the apartment with it. I started to think that maybe, her sitting by her food bowl was a fluke? Maybe, you can’t train cats after all? It took some online research and trial and error for me to realize that Jalapeño wasn’t a bad learner, I was a bad teacher. I needed to build up my skills, learn what science said about training and cat behavior and get lots of hands-on practice under the watchful eye of a professional. 

I started volunteering at local cat rescues, shelters and organizations. I met behavior professionals in the field, threw myself into spending time with them and their cats and learned everything I could from them. I attended conferences, online webinars and talks. I took classes in feline training, behavior, history and nutrition at Animal Behavior Institute where I eventually received my CFTBS (certified feline trainer and behavior specialist) credential. The more I did and the more I learned, the more I grew and felt whole. I realized how much I loved working with cats. And the feeling of helping a cat and their owner connect and build a language together, maybe for the first time, was like nothing else I’d experienced before. In 2021, I officially opened my cat behavior and training consultant business called Natural Healthy Cats, LLC and started to dig in deeper into the science and needs of cats and their owners. I’m still growing and learning and loving every minute of it.