Cats are intelligent creatures, and many react quite well to simple training exercises such as toilet training and feeding schedules. However cats are in no way like dogs, and will simply not understand complex training demands, and respond very badly to punishments and scolding which just confuses and frightens them, and will actually encourage bad behaviour by stressing them. Therefore although you can train your cat to follow a few simple house rules, you will just have to accept you may never get them to understand the counter tops are out of bounds or the couch must not be scratched, and so punishing them for these misbehaviours is pointless and cruel.

Adverse Conditioning
Adverse conditioning works well with cats, by making certain actions such as getting up on the kitchen counters undesirable for them. This works best when they are still young cats, and you can create adverse conditions by covering the counter top with aluminium foil or double sided sticky tape, which is unpleasant for them to walk on so that eventually they will not even think about getting on the counter. You could also buy a spray mist dispenser and give them a little squirt of water if you catch them on the counter, and this also works if you catch them scratching the furniture. You will need to persist a little while with this, but eventually they will associate the misbehaviour with unpleasant conditions and stop doing it.

Provide Alternatives
Cats need to scratch in order to keep their claws healthy, and by providing them with their own scratching post you can help to encourage them away from using the furniture to sharpen their claws on. You can buy scratching posts in pet stores, or you can make your own by wrapping some rough hemp rope around a small piece of board and gluing it in place, which you can then hang up either in the home or out on the porch so that you cat can easily use it. It is also important that you have a least two litter trays in the house, especially if you have more than one cat as they often like to have their very own place to go to the toilet, and don’t like sharing, so by only having one litter tray you are actually encouraging one of your cats to go to the toilet on the floor or furniture somewhere else around the house.

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can you train cats? how to trained cat use water dispenser

Related posts:

1. Toilet Training Kittens
2. Tips for Dealing with Cat Misbehaviour