Reinforcement-Based Training

   Whether imagining your cat weaving through your legs, giving "high fives," sitting on cue or riding a skateboard, The Cognitive Cat, LLC is here to assist and empower you and the felines in your life as you have fun, while enhancing and enriching your relationship with one another. Training is a great way to learn how behavior is created along with being able to use this knowledge and application to your advantage by setting the cat in your life up for increased success through training the kinds of behaviors that access reinforcers (a tasty treat) so that these behaviors increase and the other behaviors that are not preferable decrease as they are replaced by new modes of communication between you and the cat in your life. 

   An example of this is seen in station training. Station training refers to the leaner remaining at a fixed location for a fixed amount of time. A station could be a blanket or cat bed, or another object and some great use of stations is having them in areas where your cat might otherwise lie down on something less preferable. I use stations (usually a small blanket) when I'm typing on the computer (just like now) as that way the cats in my life can be next to me, but at an agreed location that we have trained for. We have taken time to develop an association between the location of this station with reinforcers (of all sorts), so it has become a predictable location for the cats to go to and remain at in certain contexts. Which is preferable to them splaying out over the keyboard, which seems to be a national pastime for the cats in my life. 

   Other areas that training are beneficial for are cooperative care, which is a system of incorporating choice and control for animals of all species when it comes to medical or husbandry procedures. There are many aspects of cooperative care as it can be incorporated in such diversity of settings including: grooming, medication administration, veterinary examinations, carrier entrance and exiting, as well as for blood draws and injections of all sorts, to name but a few of the applications of this amazingly empowering and successful approach. 

   So, whether looking to learn more about reinforcement-based clicker training, training some cool cat tricks to impress friends and family alike, or working to empower felines to voluntarily participate in their own care through choice and control, contact us and find out just how trainable cats really are!