I have to start by telling you what this book is not. It’s not a kitten training book. It won’t tell you how to choose a cat or what nutrients or vaccinations your cat needs. This is a book focused on adult cats with big or little behavior problems. Whether you’ve lived with problems for years or you just want to make sure problems don’t develop in the future, this is the book that will cover those issues in detail. Since behavior problems cause more cats to be relinquished to shelters than medical issues do, it’s important that you have the correct tools to help you and your cat get back to the relationship you’ve always wanted.
Inspirations for books can come from many different places. It’s not unusual for a passing comment made by an acquaintance or a brief interaction with someone to spark an idea or trigger a life-changing moment. My inspiration for this book came from meeting Mr. Grumpypaws, a cat who is living proof that it’s never too late to work on behavior problems and make life better for you and your kitty. You’ll learn a little more about Mr. Grumpypaws in a moment.
When you first decide to share your life with a cat, whether the cat in your life has been with you since kittenhood or found his way into your heart as an adult, you don’t usually go into the relationship expecting to endure behavior problems or develop an antagonistic relationship with that ball of fur.
Picture some of the touching scenes from cat food or litter commercials in which cats lovingly cuddle with their human family or happily trot to the food bowl when dinner is served. These cats always use the litter box, never scratch the furniture, and wouldn’t dream of coughing up a hairball on the very expensive comforter in the beautifully decorated bedroom. How about biting the hand that feeds them? Unheard of!
If you’re looking across the room at your cat and wondering what went wrong, don’t be discouraged. It’s not too late to turn things around. Many of the behavior consultations I do are the result of the human family members not understanding what their cats truly need and what they are communicating by their so-called misbehaviors. So many people have just given up and resigned themselves to living with cats in situations in which neither they nor their cat is really happy. They feel they’ve lived with it this long, they can suffer through a few more years. You and your cat don’t have to live that way anymore. Many times the problem is that the cat owner has never received accurate information about how cats should be trained. Cats are not little dogs, and yet many people continue to look at them that way. When that happens, the cat and the human family both lose.
You can and should love your cats as cherished family members, but it’s crucial to always recognize that they are cats and not furry human children. Cats have their own way of communicating; they have specific needs emotionally, physically, and medically. Imagine how much better your relationship with your cat would be if you had the tools to understand what he was communicating by his behavior and could effectively use that knowledge to solve problems. Surprisingly, interpreting his language is not hard at all.
For many people, life with their cats goes smoothly for years or even throughout the cats’ lifetimes. Unfortunately, though, that isn’t the case for many others. You and your cat may be hitting that bump in the road right now—or maybe in your case it’s more like a roadblock or a total detour. Many of us have found ourselves sharing our lives with cats through rescue, shelter adoption, or taking in strays. In these cases, the cats are not clean slates. They come into our lives with a history that influences their current and future behavior. Those influences are powerful, but they can, in many cases, be changed or at least improved through behavior modification so the cats can blossom in their new lives.
If you bought this book, chances are your cat is exhibiting a behavior problem, or maybe you just want to make sure you learn to read warning signs before a problem begins. If you’re dealing with a behavior problem, what do you think went wrong? Do you think it’s your fault? It’s not. Is it your cat’s fault? Absolutely not. For so many people, the idea of being able to train a cat seems impossible. Cats have been the subject of endless jokes about being aloof, independent, and untrainable. So many people assume that if they’re going to live with a cat, they’ll just have to accept the hand they’re dealt. You may not have realized your cat even had a behavior problem until suddenly, one day, everything changed. Maybe he doesn’t actually have a problem at all—maybe he’s scratching on furniture because he’s trying to fill a normal need and there isn’t a more acceptable option for him.
You may have found lots of people with opinions on how you should train your cat or, better yet, how impossible it is to even think of training a cat. It’s easy to find bad information and you may have been led in the wrong direction. Family, friends, and neighbors can be well meaning, but that doesn’t make their cat advice sound.
Behavior problems are often made worse because cat owners misunderstand the underlying cause and assume the misbehavior is deliberate. If you take nothing else away from reading this book, please remember that no cat deliberately and willfully tries to misbehave. Your cat is facing a problem and attempting to solve it according to what he knows as a cat. That’s why it’s crucial for you to find the underlying cause of the behavior in order to come up with the right solution. Whether it’s just a pesky little annoying behavior you’d like to tweak or a major problem that has you at the end of your rope, you must shift your thinking in order to look at the possible true cause, as well as determine whether it’s truly a behavior problem or a normal behavior that needs a better alternative. In either case, I’ll do my best to help you come up with a solution. This book will guide you as you play detective in order to figure out what’s wrong and then I’ll map out your behavior modification plan.
Back to Mr. Grumpypaws. He was twenty years old and one of the oldest cats I’ve been asked to consult about. Veterinarians see many eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-old cats, and some even older than that, but behavior consultants don’t tend to fill their schedules with such geriatric kitties.
Mr. Grumpypaws was in surprisingly good health for such an elderly feline. His cat owner called me because the cat had always been grouchy and unpredictable, kept everyone awake at night with his howling, and had a somewhat hostile relationship with his companion cat of six years.
I was called so late in this cat’s life because the client had only recently heard of cat behavior consulting. She happened to see me on television and then did an Internet search to track down my office. Up until that point, she had always just assumed that Mr. Grumpypaws was unchangeable. She loved her cat, whom she had gotten from a shelter when he was six months old. Originally named Oscar, his name became unofficially but permanently changed to Mr. Grumpypaws five years later.
When I did the house-call consultation, I saw that there were a number of little things that needed changing that would make a huge difference to Mr. Grumpypaws. He was being pushed out of his favorite spots by his younger companion, something the client hadn’t noticed because of the subtle body language the younger cat was using. Ever since Mr. Grumpypaws was a young adult, he had lots of energy but no healthy outlet for it. That led to destructive behavior that resulted in punishment. The cat became confused and frustrated, and developed an antagonist relationship with his human family. There were numerous changes we were able to make that improved Mr. Grumpypaws’s disposition. By creating more vertical space for the two cats to climb and perch, we increased their territories and eased the tension. We made changes to their litter box setup to create more security. I also put the clients on a schedule of doing low-intensity, age-appropriate interactive play therapy with Mr. Grumpypaws to help him gain confidence and work off his anxiety. Since he was a very active cat, even at twenty years old, we were able to use environmental enrichment techniques to keep him occupied so he would be less likely to keep everyone up at night. The play sessions, combined with some other activities to win Mr. Grumpypaws’s trust back, enabled the human family to get close to him again—something everyone had missed very much. Those modifications, along with other very specific techniques I mapped out for the family, allowed Mr. Grumpypaws to turn back into Oscar again.
Oscar is now twenty-three years old, and the last three years have been problem-free, other than some health issues, which are certainly to be expected at his advanced age. Although the family doesn’t know how much longer he has to live, they’re grateful that he has had the last three years of security, contentment, and fun, and has been able to get the most out of his life. Let Mr. Grumpypaws inspire you to take the steps necessary to correct your feline behavior problem, no matter how long you’ve lived with it. Even if the problem is so deeply rooted that you can’t completely correct it, you should be able to improve the situation and gain a better understanding of what caused it.
So what typically goes wrong in the cat-human relationship? One thing you may not realize is that your cat, being the smart creature that he is, is learning from you, even when you’re not aware of it. You may have been reinforcing the very behaviors you don’t want. It’s a common problem that I see daily in my consultations. In so many cases, the only time the cat gets attention is when he’s being reprimanded for a misbehavior. Here’s an example of reinforcing an unwanted behavior: giving your cat a treat, praise, or petting in order to quiet him or stop him from being aggressive or frightened. The attention you showed toward the behavior told the cat that he was correct in behaving that way. How many times have you picked up your cat and petted him when he was hissing or growling at a visitor? It’s very natural to want to comfort him, but the message you send is that he should do that very same behavior again the next time a guest visits.
Other reasons why behavior problems occur are changes in the household—such as the addition of another cat, a new family member, or a move to a new house—or the fact that the cat has reached social maturity (around two to four years of age). Most cat owners don’t even know that there is such a thing as social maturity, so how in the world would they know how it could affect a cat’s behavior?
In trying to correct behavior problems, you need to work with the cat’s nature so you can better understand where he’s coming from. Cats are cautious creatures who are suspicious of change. They’re territorial and most comfortable in familiar surroundings, but they need stimulation and activity within that familiar environment. Cats have a prey-drive, and everything about their bodies was built for hunting. They also have a need for cleanliness. Cats use multiple forms of communication. All of these things will be used in behavior modification as you work on solving behavior problems.
As you go through this book and learn about behavior modification, you’ll see a pattern develop. The pattern is centered around choice. You won’t be forcing your cat to do anything at any time. What you’ll be doing is creating choices for him. He’ll be making choices concerning things that matter very much to him, such as his litter box, feeding station, sleeping area, play technique, affection, social interaction. By giving him acceptable choices, his anxiety level decreases. He’ll let you know what he prefers, and with that communication you can create an environment that inspires desirable behavior. Everybody wins.
No matter where you are in your relationship with your cat, you can improve the situation. If you’ve used inappropriate techniques or punished your cat in the past, then some fence-mending may need to be done. If you’ve lived with a problem for so long you don’t know how you’ll ever find the original cause, don’t worry; this book will guide you through that process. Starting from scratch is a method that stops you from continuing down the wrong road and puts you on the right path toward a happy life with your cat.
Here’s hoping we can turn your own Mr. Grumpypaws back into Oscar again.