Cat treats are a little harder to come by than dog treats. It’s easy to see why – treats tend to be mostly about training, and most people don’t even think about training their cats!

That said, I think cats can and should get some training. Most cats can be taught to come when they’re called, and if you catch ‘em young, they can be taught all kinds of tricks. Check out this youtube video from the States.

I reckon at the very least, cats should be taught “come” (which could save their life one day), and “get down” which comes in oh so handy at our place where little black pawprints cover every surface.Another command I think every cat should learn is “stay”. Think about it. How many scenarios can you come up with where that would come in handy? Just off the top of my head…

• Keeping an indoor cat from running out the door (it works because they know they’re busted!)
• Keeping an outdoor cat from running out in front of a car.
• Stopping a cat from jumping up onto food preparation areas.
• Keeping a cat from jumping down into a dangerous situation – like when you’ve just dropped a glass and haven’t picked up the bits (or is that just me? I’m kinda clumsy.

I’m a great believer in treat-based training, but I couldn’t for the life of me find something that my cat would work for – besides the not really health-and-sloppy fish paste option.

Cat treats need to be yummy to the cat but easy to handle and dole out in small quantities. I bought some scary heart-shaped ones but Mei Mei turned up her tiny nose at them. My last cat loved dried fish, but again, they were not to the likings of our little princess. I was fast running out of options, until I discovered these appallingly-named treats at Woolworths. Say it with me now “Love ‘em Purrfect Liver Treats.” Naming products is a science, see?

They come with all kinds of reassuring claims about natural goodness and veterinary degrees and such. They’re dry enough to handle and moist enough to be tasty, you can break them up if you want to, they cost just four bucks and best of all, Mei Mei will literally jump through hoops for these.

I tend to run my dog through his arsenal of tricks about three times a week these days just to keep him on the ball. Now when we’re doing our little trick sessions, I often feel a pair of beady blue eyes on me – that’s Mei Mei, wanting treats too.

She learned “sit”, “stay” and “get down” so fast I’m kind of wracking my brains for other useful things to teach her. Like all treat-based training, you have to be sneaky or she’ll only do it when there are treats in sight. Good thing these are generally within reach now.

RATING:
BUY IT: Woolworths/Pet Supersavers
COST: AUD$3.95

For the first few weeks we had her, our kitten Mei Mei had no sense of right from wrong. She swaggered around on the table, stealing food. She jumped on benches, stalked across my keyboard while I was working and yowled demandingly at seven o’clock every morning to be fed. We’d put in so much work with Jack, but Mei Mei had the household wrapped around one dainty claw. Something had to be done.

A lot of the suggestions out there for disciplining a cat are kind of awful – tap it on the nose, smack it on the bottom or, the most horrible one of all – spray the poor creature with a solution of vinegar and water! Argh! Who are these people?

Let me tell you from the bitter experience of my Dark Past that smacking a cat on the bottom does not work. It makes them either sullen and suspicious, or angry and violent. I’m a firm believer that violence begets violence – if you put an animal in a position where it doesn’t feel safe, it will find some way to protect itself.

So what works? Happily, there’s the sane and sensible advice of Chris Madsen, from his book, “Natural Cats”.

“Cats can hear, smell, taste, feel and see. It is hard to imagine a sight that would ruffle a cat but sound, odour, touch and taste can all be used to deter as well as encourage. Discouraging sounds you can make include a sudden clap, a hiss, a growl, or even a loud “no” (but without the [cat’s] name attached). Using a sound that rarely comes in any other context will be quicker and more effective. Sensations a cat dislikes include earthquakes, rain and wind. These translate respectively into a stamp on the ground, a waterspray, and a puff of air in the face.”

“Cats learn, as we do, by making associations between cause and effect. The trick is to persuade the cat to associate all the positive things with you and the negative things with blind fate.”

How do we do this? We use the waterspray technique and try not to let her see where it came from (hide it behind your back, whistle nonchalantly). Mei Mei is smarter than us so she’s probably onto us, but she’s also eager to please, so the water spray has gone a long way towards keeping her off the bench and stopping her from climbing the screen door (funny, but not good for the screen At All.)

A stamp on the ground or a bump on the table also has gone a long way towards teaching her to keep her wee nose out of our food. And a firm “no” followed by transportation to her scratching pole is helping her keep her claws off our furniture.

Now if only I can get her to stop meowing continuously when clients call, all cat discipline problems will be sorted!

I guess I must be one of those herbally, hippy types.  I don’t like using antibiotics if I can help it, I use lavendar oil on my pillow to get to sleep and I go to a kinesoligist to cure a stiff neck. (Hey! Don’t knock it, it worked!)

So the thought of putting our Birman Cat Louie under sedation for a clip rankled.  Along with the proposed $180 bill.  Eek!

I knew in my heart that gentle Louie wouldn’t need a sedative, but try telling a vet that.  Cats do have a reputation for getting kinda nasty when stretched out over a bench and attacked with a pair of scissors and a razor.

Then a local dog groomer came to the rescue. Yay! With her no-nonsense attitude and gutsy dispostion , she agreed to undertake a non-sedated cat grooming session on the condition that “if Louie was not 100% angelic”, the clip would be cut short (pardon the pun).

Bouyed by Miss D’s article on peanut butter and wriggly pups, I called on Dave to come and help with a small jar of anchovie paste.  And it worked a treat! Sure it was ridiculously smelly, but we only needed to distract him for the first five, stressful minutes of his groom and then he even seemed to like the feel of the clippers on his back (though not his tummy).

Have to say, the groomer did a FAB job, and because he was soooo good she only charged us $40! Sure Louie is a relaxed cat, but I think the anchovie paste really helped out too.

And since his cut, Louie’s been confident, energised and has even pranced!  He’s a cat that truly defies convention.

 Doesn’t he look just gorgeous?

Like puppies, kittens need lots of toys to play with or else they become destructive – ask Miss T about her laptop power cord! Mei Mei skitters her many expensive toys under cupboards etc on a regular basis and then moans (loudly) that she’s got nothing to play with. So I’ve gotten into the twice weekly routine of slithering around on the floor on my belly in search of furry bloody mice, balls with bells in them, etc.

As Mei Mei has the attention span of a gnat, scrambling around after cat toys can get boring when I need to quickly distract her from her favourite hobby – chasing the cursor around on my screen when I’m working.

Miss T had mentioned running into a woman in a pet store who practically begged her to try out toy balls made of aluminium foil. Unfortunately, Jacque and Louie were completely disinterested.

But as I watched Mei Mei schizophrenically batting around a dust-bunny in the kitchen this morning and generally getting underfoot, I thought I’d give it a whirl. The results, as you can see, were impressive. This kept her attention for an hour.

Miss T proclaims this to be an “oriental thing” but maybe it’s just a kitten thing. Either way – you gotta try this on your cat.RATING:
BUY IT: DIY!
COST: Erm… a few cents a ball?

Life with Mei Mei the Cornish Rex is a tonne of fun. I’ve heard the Cornie described best as “something other than a cat” and I get it now. She’s more like a squirrel, or a mogwai, or a little spider monkey. She picks things up in her hand-like paws, springs off the walls like a rubber ball, and curls up in my lap like a purry hot-water-bottle.

But the downside of life with Mei Mei for the first ten days was a very bad smell. Imagine the worst possible thing a kitten could smell of and – you got it. The breeder wasn’t able to shed any light on it (to be honest, she got kinda defensive) so I could only put it down to stress – the kitten wasn’t cleaning herself properly because the flight, and separation from Mum, had thrown her too hard.

Then my own Mum came to visit, and noticed that Mei Mei had weeping eyes and a snuffle. Over the week Mum and and her “Grandcat” fell in love, and Mei Mei’s occasional fairy-like sneeze progressed into a full-blown version of Cat Flu.

Poor little pusskins. The vet said that if we’re unlucky, she’ll be lifelong carrier, and it’ll resurface from time to time like Malaria in humans.

So the mystery of the Smelly Kitten was cleared up – Mei Mei was too congested to notice the smell, and fell out of the habit of washing after toileting.

The way to deal, according to the Vet, is to use a rough washcloth dipped in warm water to clean her hindquarters in short, mother cat-like strokes. She seems to be catching on, because she’s much more interested in grooming now, and yesterday when I marched her into the bathroom for our daily ritual, she was dutifully grooming herself on the tiles before I turned away from the sink.

Man. Potty Training is really the price you pay for raising babies of all species. But as Mum and Mei Mei demonstrate in these photos, it’s well worth it.