You sound as if you are doing just fine with that

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How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven. - Robert A. Heinlein
http://www.lambchopsiamese.webs.com

Sounds like she uses both to me, otherwise why would 'knowing there was water' in a bottle do anything? My cats don't fear water...

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Mine don't either, Indy sticks his head under the running tap all the time.

I don't know how I trained Indy lol!
He sits when I ask him to, not vocal, I put my hand up and he looks at it and sits lol He snatched a lot when we hand fed when he was a kitten, so I stopped letting him have it until he gave up and sat down, then he got over enthusiastic praise and the food. Now he doesn't snatch, he knows he has to sit nice.

He also knows that "Hot!" means something different to "No!" lol. He knows hot means something dangerous, and no means something he can completely ignore if he chooses. We wouldn't start using Hot instead of no because he's very smart and would then start to ignore Hot, which could put him in danger


This would be a much longer reply if you had asked how my kitten trained me

Yep - mine know what "hot" means too. They also know their names, various compliments, "Dinner", "biscuits" and "bedtime." Shame they appear to have no idea what "No" means
oh and the strange letters at the top are courtesy of my small furry computer tech - I have computer literate cats!

Hissing works with my cat 80% of the times. The best training tip though is to praise and reward the positive behaviour that you'd like to reinforce.

I have taught lily and ted to sit on command

Totally by accident but hey im still going to take credit.

They have learnt if they want a treat / my sunday roast / anything vaguely edible to sit and wait and they will get something ... actually typing it out it make it sound like they have trained me

Apart from that they will do whatever they want, i would never use water use a loud no / bang should distract them enough never distract them with a toy else they may associate being naughty with being played with.

Hissing or a clap is a good way to stop them, providing they don't know the sound has come from you and think it is a result of what they were doing.

As well as this I then use the distraction to remove whatever they were playing with (wires usually!) and they happily go on to play with other, more appropriate things.

Hey, and they have started to come when called. This makes me really happy, even though they respond to either name at the moment. Little steps....