Adoption Diaries: Move Over Dogs, It's the Kitties' Turn!

Elyse's Adoption Diary:

The ASPCA held a series of classes for volunteers in order to teach us how to clicker-train cats. Many of our behaviorists use clickers to train dogs and decided it was time kitties got their chance! Why should a cat be trained, you ask?

That was my main question when going to the class. I quickly learned that the purpose of getting the volunteers to train the cats is to boost adoptions. And the idea isn't to train them in anything fancy, like completing complicated obstacle courses; the idea is simply for them to learn a few basic things to make them, well, "cuter," and therefore more likely to get adopted. For instance, we want to teach the cats to come to the front of their cages and put up a paw instead of hiding in the back. Adopters find that very hard to resist!

The clicker can also be used to teach a cat to sit, wave, touch his nose to your hand and spin. What's the main element to training a cat? Entice them with treats, of course! The nice part is, it's win-win for the cat. Even if they don't pick up on the tricks, they're still getting nice socialization time and treats out of the training. I'm eager to give it a shot!

So, clicker training in a nutshell (if you don't have a clicker you can snap the top of a ballpoint pen):








-At the very second the cat starts to do the behavior you're aiming for, click, then give treat.
-Never click without giving treat.
-Never use clicker to get attention.

Here are a couple of videos to demonstrate:

Trish McMillan, ASPCA Director of Animal Behavior, asked us to choose a new trick to teach her dog, Kenya, who already knew lots of tricks, thanks to clicker training. We chose crawling; here's Trish teaching Kenya to crawl using the clicker.




Here's Katie Watts, Feline Behavior Counselor, showing off the tricks that Myles has learned. Myles is one smart cat! We hope he gets adopted soon!



So, now what? Well, Katie gave us a list of the cats who have been at our adoption center the longest and can use the most help. So we're going to start with them, and hope we can find them homes! Wish us luck!

** Be sure to check out my Flickr page to see all the photos from my visits to the adoption center.

** Click here to view available animals at our adoption center.