Feline Behavior Basics: Learning Their Language

We, humans, are very demonstrative critters. Unlike humans, our kitties communicate mainly using their senses of smell, touch, and sight (body language), whose main form of communication is verbal. We use very "loud" body language, facial expressions, and language to communicate. Dogs, too, tend to wear their hearts on their sleeve when using body language to communicate. Cats, however, tend to be much more subtle in their communication. Learning what our cats are saying to other non-humans and family members can be very important.

Here's a brief discussion of feline body language, and I've provided resources for more detailed information below. We need to know how our cat communicates to see whether they're happy, stressed, or in pain and catch early signs of conflict. 

A cat's body language behavior is either affiliative ("come closer") or antagonistic ("go away").

Affiliative Behaviors:

· Grooming, proximity, and cuddling.

· Flagpole (upright tail) infers a happy greeting.

· Bonded cats will often wrap around each other.

· Cats will often give a slow, soft blink to indicate trust and affection.

· Rubbing and head butting indicate trust and affection.

Antagonistic Behaviors:

Threat-signaling may include direct stares, body blocking, forward and stiff ears, hissing, growling, tail twitching, or lashing. 

Stress and Fear:

· Very fearful cats may show "Halloween cat" posture: standing sideways, arched back, bottle brush tail, fur standing up, ears pinned to head...essentially trying to make themselves look bigger (usually done if cornered).

· Fearful cats may also try to appear small, curling into a ball with a tail tightly wrapped around their bodies.

· Ears to the side ("airplane ears") indicate varying levels of concern, stress, annoyance, or fear.

· The more fearful and aroused the cat, the farther back the ears. A highly aroused and fearful cat will have his ears pinned flat to a high head.

· Dilated eyes indicate high arousal.

Appeasement or Displacement Gestures:

A stressed, frustrated,, or feeling threatened cat may show gestures that diffuse the situation or ask for space. These include lip-licking, gulping, sudden or prolonged self-grooming, looking away, moving away, turning the head away, and yawning. If your cat is performing these behaviors, look for the source of conflict.

Pain and Sickness:  

· Cats tend to hide signs of illness, and behavior changes may be the only early disease indicators. 

· Cats in pain may hide, be less social, and stop grooming or eating. 

· They may vocalize more. 

· They may sleep more or less. 

· They may move away, flinch, or aggressively react when picked up, petted, or restrained.

· Other signs of pain can include teeth grinding, lack of using the litter box, and purring.

· ANY acute change in behavior warrants a trip to the vet.

Using Training to Teach a Common Language

Why is Training Important?

We can train cats to perform behaviors they associate with relaxation and focus and affiliate with positive emotions. We can use such behaviors to help our kitties form new and positive emotional associations. We can also use them to redirect our kitty from triggers for emotional arousal. For instance, if we see our kitty start to fixate on the housemate he sometimes chases, we can use a "come when called" cue or a hand target to redirect him.

We can also train cats to do something incompatible with another unwanted activity. For instance, we can get a cat to go to a "station" like a cat tree instead of jumping on the counter while making dinner. Here's a little terminology about how cats, and all species, learn along with links to resources on the science of learning.

Classical Conditioning means that learning occurs when a neutral stimulus (a sound, sight, or smell that previously didn't mean anything) comes to predict a specific response. Making this association without conscious thought causes an involuntary and emotional response. Your cat, therefore, has no control over his response. The reaction can be negative (fear) or positive (happiness or calmness) but is always accompanied by a physiological response. The individual has no control and is known as a Pavlovian response.

Classical Conditioning occurs at the primitive, emotional level and can create powerful emotional reactions that are difficult to "unlearn." Associations made from fear or pain are powerful, and this form of learning overshadows all other states. An example of classical Conditioning is when your cat learns that the sound of a can opener means food is coming and starts to drool. Another example is when your cat becomes frightened at the sight of the carrier when you bring it out to take him to the vet.

Operant Conditioning is a form of learning that occurs when your cat makes a conscious decision to perform a behavior based on the consequence of his actions. If we reward the behavior, he'll do it more. If we punish him, he'll do it less, thus what we usually think of as "training."

Reinforcement is anything applied (positive) or taken away (negative) to increase a behavior's occurrence. An example of Positive Reinforcement is to give your cat a yummy treat if approaching on cue when you've called the cat's name. Teaching your horse to pick up his foot by pinching his foot's skin and stopping once he picks it up is a Negative Reinforcement.

Negative Reinforcement involves the application of something aversive. It's impossible to experience operant conditioning alone. Some form of Classical Conditioning always comes with it. That is why HOW you train is even more important than WHAT you train. You want to create good emotional associations and avoid bad ones. For this reason, we use positive reinforcement-based training and avoid Punishment. (See the Resource section for an article on Punishment).

Positive Reinforcement Training is fun for cats and increases our bond with them. Training gives your kitty an opportunity for mental stimulation and Enrichment.

Punishment, by definition, is anything you apply (positive) or remove (negative) to decrease a behavior. (Here, positive and negative doesn't mean "good" or "bad.") If you spray your cat with a water bottle to stop him from clawing, that's positive Punishment. If your cat is vocalizing for attention while you pet him and walk away to get him to stop, that's negative Punishment. For something to be a punishment, it needs to be aversive or scary enough to stop a behavior by definition.

Desensitization is the process of exposing your cat to a scary or upsetting thing at an intensity that doesn't scare him and then gradually increasing the intensity of that stimulus. The most important part of this process is that the kitty never has a fearful response and remains under the threshold.

Counterconditioning is the process of changing your kitty's previous negative, fearful-conditioned emotional response from a stimulus to a positive one. Pair the scary thing (at a level that isn't scary) with a positive emotional association stimulus, which means Counterconditioning and Desensitization are best when done together.

Conditioned Reinforcer means to pair a neutral stimulus (a clicker) with a positive conditioned stimulus (food) until the neutral stimulus comes to predict the positive one. I use the word "yes."

Shaping teaches more complex behavior (settling on a mat) by rewarding successive approximations of the behavior. For instance, I might start rewarding my cat for simply looking at the mat. Then, I might wait for her to approach the mat. Then, I might ask for one foot on the mat, etc.

Luring is using a tool to elicit the desired behavior. For instance, I might use a toy or a treat to attract my cat toward the mat and reward that behavior.

Training a Behavior:

Motivation is using something your kitty loves as a reward. Motivation might be playing with a toy, scratching, grooming, or feeding a treat. You may need to experiment with many different things, and the reward may need to change based on circumstances.

· If using food treats, use only a tiny piece or a puréed food in a syringe or tube (i.e., Churu).

· Pick a marker word as a Conditioned Reinforcer. Say this word just as the cat performs the wanted behavior. It should be one syllable (i.e., "Yes") and means, "that's the behavior we want, and a reward is coming"

· "Shaping" the goal behavior means we start with the slightest approximation of the behavior the kitty can give. We'll reward that behavior, and when the kitty is doing that fluently, we'll start asking for a higher criterion.

· Don't punish or correct; wait for the behavior and reward. If the kitty can't give the correct behavior, back up and ask for an easier one.

· You can also "lure"; This means you can use something like a toy or treat to lure the cat onto the target area or into the target behavior. For instance, you could toss a treat onto the mat to initiate mat-settle behavior.

· Don't worry about using a name to cue the behavior until the cat is reforming the goal behavior at least 80 percent of the time. Cats don't speak English.

Special Kitty Considerations with Training: 

Compared to humans, cats have more "real estate" in their brains devoted to sensory processing and emotional associations and less decision-making and deep thinking. These reasons are why a kitty may be easily distracted by noise and movement. Practice when calm and quiet, and hug each cat individually.

1. Cats are far-sighted, so rewards and cues should be at least six inches away from your kitty's nose.

2. Cats often need to investigate a treat before taking it, and they generally take a little while to eat it. Use either tiny and easily chewed foods or a purée style treat (Churu).

3. Give the kitty time to groom herself after eating her treat.

4. Kitties have a short attention span and are often easily frustrated. Do short sessions (less than five minutes and keep it interesting by breaking the goal behavior into manageable steps. Make sure you end the session on a good note.

5. Cats sometimes take more time to process what we ask and offer a behavior than dogs.

Foundation Exercises:

1. Name recognition and recall.

2. Look.

3. Touch.

4. Go to a place and become an "on" and "off" switch (later).

5. Harness/walking jacket, (links in resources) Teaching Your Cat to Wear a Harness

6. Carrier habituation. Sleepy Pod  How to Habituate Your Cat to a Carrier

Introducing New Cats: 

Create a "Catopia": A room that separates the new cat from the others. The new kitty should have his own resources (food, water, enrichment, resting and hiding areas, toys, and litterbox) in an easily accessible and safe place. (Note: The reintroduction process with housemate aggression cases involves the same basic approach. However, it must be done more gradually and with guidance.

Environmental Enrichment: (see the resource section)

· Indirect lighting (no harsh overhead fluorescent lights).

· Lots of vertical spaces with cat trees, shelving, etc.

· Keep him feeling safe. Hiding places that don't allow other cats or strays to look in windows.

· Pheromones plug-ins (Feliway or Multi-Cat)

· Plenty of marking opportunities (scratching, rubbing, etc.).

· Plenty of play outlets, hunting, and mental stimulation (food dispensing toys, i.e., small meals they work for). Hide them around the room and use the timed dispenser to distribute these treats.

· Make sure they aren't too complicated, and your cat enjoys them.

· You may need to experiment.

· Spend quality time interacting with kitty.

· Place a remote camera in the room to be sure kitty is happy when you aren't there (watch for stress-signaling vs. normal behavior)

· Be sure to add the same Enrichment to the rest of the house.

· Begin teaching basic foundation behaviors and administer medication, IF warranted, for reintroduction situations.

When There Are No Signs of Stress:

· Begin scent swapping and bedding exchange. Do this for seven days until there are no signs of stress, then allow the cats to "timeshare." Remove the resident cats and allow the new cat to explore the communal areas without them present. 

· Don't allow other cats into the "Catopia" room. 

· Do this for one week with no stress signs.

· Once the foundation behaviors are fluent, and the other steps accomplished, create a barrier in the "Catopia" room doorway, where the cats can see each other but not touch (a screened door or stacked baby gates). Only open the door to give free access during supervised sessions.

· Start by having one person on each side of the barrier. Hand-feed high-value treats to each cat or introduce a lure toy at a distance from the barrier where there's no fixating between cats. The cats should essentially be ignoring each other. Do short sessions, gradually getting closer and closer to the barrier until the cats are side by side. It's easiest to work with one resident cat at a time. If one cat becomes fixated, redirect with a foundation behavior, lure toy, or treat and end the session.

· Once accomplished, start feeding meals across the barrier, at a distance, and work closer each session. Once all cats are comfortably eating meals next to the barrier, add one resident cat at a time to the sessions.

· Once you accomplish this step, you can start to allow the new cat out with supervision (if reintroducing, you may want to use a harness first). Interrupt and redirect any fixating, threatening, or aroused body language. 

· Throughout all steps, it's advisable to use a black light to sweep the home in the dark to ensure no marking or inappropriate elimination.

Jump to the next section on "Feline Behavior Basics: Why a Cat's Gotta Cat."