Are you living with a cat that refuses to use its litter box? Maybe your cat is insistent that your furnishings make a far better scratch post than the big fancy one that you bought! Or is your cat waking the entire neighbourhood with its cries for food at 3am? If this sounds familiar then you need to seriously think about training your cat to solve your cat behaviour problems, however before you can do that you need to determine WHY your cat is behaving like he is.
The first and most common reason for cat behaviour problems is a medical problem. If your cats’ behaviour changed suddenly from being the perfect pet into a problem pet overnight then you need to get him checked out by a vet to rule out any medical problems. For example, a cat with a urinary tract infection will find it painful to urinate and will associate its litter box with pain so will seek out an alternative. Another example, a cat that is in pain when touched will react viciously, not because he doesn’t like you but because when you touch him it causes him pain. Cats generally do not show any signs of illness so it is hard to know when your cat is ill. If you try to correct your cats behaviour problems when his is in fact ill then it will only confuse him.
If you have ruled out a medical problem then the next step is to determine whether the root of your cats’ problems is environmental. If your cat’s behaviour changed suddenly (and it is not due to a medical reason) then it may have been caused by an environmental change. These are things such as moving house, new baby, new cat or even a new cat to the neighbourhood. The most common behavioural changes for these causes are spraying indoors and using furnishings as scratch posts. This is your cats’ way of marking his territory.
The last cause is that your cat is the boss of you. In this case your cat needs to be retrained to obey the house rules. Your cat feels that your house is HIS territory and will therefore do with it as he sees fit. The reality is that YOU need to be the boss of your cat and this is where the retraining comes in.
If your cat has a medical problem then once it has been treated a cat will usually settle back down to his old ways very quickly and hence very little training is required unless he picked up some bad habits whilst he was ill! For a cat with environmental changes or a cat with bad habits it is a simple job of retraining your cat the correct way of doing things. The methods can vary depending on the problem you are trying to fix. If however your cat is the boss of you then it will take a little longer to retrain your cat. In this case you may want to consider cat training programs.
For more information on cat training or cat training programs visit my website.
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