Clicker Training a Cat: A Shaping Plan That Works

Quick answer

A cat that offers attention and stays on the mat is already working. Everything else is built on this.

Cats train easily. The idea that they cannot is about motivation and session length, not intelligence: a cat will not work for praise the way many dogs will, and it will not work for ten minutes at a stretch, so trainers who use dog methods conclude the cat is stubborn.

The method that suits cats is a marker signal and food. A click marks the exact instant the cat did the right thing, the food arrives a moment later, and the cat learns which fraction of a second earned it. Shaping then builds a real behaviour out of small pieces the cat can already do.

• Charge the clicker first. Click, then food, repeated until the cat looks for the food when it hears the sound.
• Keep the treats tiny and take them out of the daily ration. Twenty repetitions should not be a meal.
• Sessions of one to two minutes, several times a day, stopped while the cat still wants more.
• Never restrain a cat for training. The freedom to walk away is what makes it work.
• Train the things that matter: walking into the carrier, standing on scales, accepting paw handling, taking medication.

Decide in 60 seconds

Setting up so the first session works

A mat, a quiet corner, and nothing else competing. The mat becomes a signal in its own right: it comes out, and the cat knows what happens next.

Pick the reinforcer the cat actually wants.

Not what you think it should like. Test several: a lick of pate from a spoon, a crumb of cooked chicken, a freeze-dried meat treat, a squeeze of a lickable tube. Whatever makes the cat come across the room is your training food.

Make the pieces very small.

The size of a grain of rice is enough. The cat needs many repetitions, and a full stomach ends the session faster than anything else.

Take it out of the daily ration.

Weigh the day's food, set aside the training portion, and use it. Training that adds calories on top creates a well-trained overweight cat.

Use a quiet room with the door shut.

One cat at a time. Other cats in the room turn training into competition, and a competing cat is the fastest way to create tension between two animals that were getting along.

Give the cat a mat or a towel to work on.

It gives the cat a defined place, it becomes a cue on its own, and it makes it obvious when the cat chooses to leave.

Let the cat leave.

Never hold, corner, or lift a cat into position. A cat that can leave will come back. A cat that has been held will avoid the whole setup afterwards.

Have everything ready before you start.

Clicker in one hand, treats in a small dish within reach, phone out of the way. Fumbling for a treat destroys the timing that the click exists to provide.

Charging the marker

The click means nothing until it predicts food. Loading it takes one short session.

Click once, then immediately deliver a treat. Not at the same time, and not before. Click, pause of about a second, then food.

Repeat ten to twenty times, in a couple of short sessions. Do not ask the cat to do anything. You are only building the association.

You will know it has worked when the cat hears the click and looks toward the treat hand rather than toward the clicker.

From then on, one rule: every click is followed by food, every time, even if you clicked at the wrong moment. If you break that, the click stops being reliable information and it stops working.

And one prohibition: never click to get the cat's attention or to call it. The clicker is a marker, not a remote control. Using it to summon the cat teaches it to mean nothing in particular.

The three ways to get a behaviour

Capturing.

Wait for the cat to do something it already does, and click it. A sit, a stretch, four feet on a mat, a look at you. This is the easiest place to start and it produces a cat that begins offering behaviours to see what pays.

Luring.

Hold a treat and move it so the cat follows. Useful for getting a first sit or a first turn, and it has one trap: a cat that has been lured many times will only perform when it can see food.

Fade the lure within a handful of repetitions. Make the same hand movement with nothing in your fingers, click when the cat follows it, and deliver the food from the other hand.

Shaping.

Reinforce successive approximations toward the finished behaviour. This is the technique that makes complicated behaviours possible, and it is the one worth learning properly.

A shaping plan, worked through

The example is target training: the cat touches its nose to the end of a target, which can be a chopstick, the blunt end of a pen, or a sticky note on a wall.

It is worth learning because a nose target is a portable steering wheel. Once a cat will follow a target you can move it into a carrier, onto scales, onto a table for examination, or out of a room, without ever picking it up.

Work at one step until it is easy.

Roughly eight successes out of ten repetitions means the cat is ready to move up. Fewer than that means stay where you are.

If the cat fails twice in a row, go back.

Two failures means the step was too big. Drop to the previous step, get three or four easy successes, then try a smaller increase.

Split, do not lump.

When a cat is stuck, the answer is almost always to break the step into two smaller ones rather than to wait longer or repeat the same thing louder.

Change one thing at a time.

Duration, distance and distraction are three separate difficulties. Add duration in one room with no distractions. Add distance only once duration is solid. Add distractions last, and drop the other two back down when you do.

Keep the success rate high.

A cat that is right most of the time keeps playing. A cat that is wrong repeatedly stops, walks off, and is noticeably harder to get back next time.

Add the cue at the end, not the beginning.

Do not name a behaviour until the cat is offering it reliably. Then say the word just before the cat does it, several times, and the word acquires the meaning. Saying a cue at a cat that does not yet know the behaviour teaches it that the word is background noise.

Reading whether the cat is still working

Forward ears, a loose body, and attention on you means keep going. Ears rotating back, a tail that starts to swish, or a cat that starts grooming means the session is over.

Still in.

Ears forward, body leaning toward you, taking food readily, coming back onto the mat by itself, offering behaviours without being asked.

Losing it.

Taking food more slowly, looking away between repetitions, sitting down heavily, starting to groom. Grooming in the middle of a training session is usually a displacement behaviour and it means the cat is finding this stressful or confusing.

Finished.

Turning away, leaving the mat, refusing food, flattened ears, tail swishing, or swatting.

The correct response to any of the last two groups is to stop. Ending a session while the cat is still keen is what makes the cat come back enthusiastically next time.

What is actually worth training

Walking into the carrier on cue.

The highest-value behaviour on this list. Leave the carrier out permanently, click for looking at it, then for a paw inside, then for going in, then for staying in, then for the door closing for one second. A cat that walks into a carrier turns the worst part of veterinary care into a non-event.

Standing on a mat.

A station. Useful for feeding separately in a multi-cat home, for keeping a cat off a work surface by giving it somewhere better to be, and for holding a cat in one place while a door is opened.

Standing on scales.

Weight is the single most useful health measurement an owner can take, and it is nearly impossible in a cat that has to be held. Shape the cat onto a flat scale a paw at a time.

Paw handling and nail trims.

Touch a paw, click, treat. Then hold for a second. Then extend one claw. Then one clip, one click, and stop for the day. One nail per session is a perfectly good rate.

Accepting a syringe.

Present an empty syringe, click for a sniff, then let the cat lick something tasty from the end. When medication day arrives the syringe is already a familiar object rather than an ambush.

Coming when called.

Pair a specific sound with food, every time, no exceptions, and never use it to summon the cat for something unpleasant.

Going into a room on cue.

Genuinely useful for separating cats, for letting a delivery in, and for managing a household without chasing anyone.

Chin and cheek contact.

Teaching a cat to press its chin into your hand builds cooperative restraint, which makes examinations and ear or eye medication far less of a fight.

What never to do

Never punish. Shouting, spray bottles, tapping the nose, scruffing or shutting a cat away teaches the cat that you are unpredictable, and an unpredictable person is not someone a cat will work for.

Never restrain a cat to train it. If the cat cannot leave, it is not training, and the cat will avoid the setup afterwards.

Never withhold meals to increase motivation.

Never click without following it with food.

Never use the clicker to get the cat's attention.

Never train two cats at once in the same room until each is fluent alone.

Never keep going after the cat has disengaged, and never end a session on a failure. Ask for something easy, click that, and finish.

Never train a cat that is unwell, in pain, or recently frightened. A cat that used to train and now will not is a reason to look at its health, not its attitude.

Never use a shock, spray, or ultrasonic device marketed for cats. They suppress behaviour through fear and they create the anxiety problems that are much harder to fix than the original complaint.

When to get help

The end point of good training is a cat that walks onto its mat, sits down, and waits to find out what pays today.

Stop training and book a veterinary appointment if a cat that used to engage now refuses, if it has become irritable when handled, if it has stopped jumping, or if there has been any change in appetite, grooming or litter tray use. Pain is the most common reason a willing cat stops working.

Book a vet appointment before training a cat that is already fearful, aggressive to people, or self-injuring. Training can be part of the plan, but not the first part.

Ask for a referral to a qualified feline behaviourist for aggression, severe fear, or house soiling that persists after medical causes have been excluded. Ask for someone who works specifically with cats.

If your goal is to make veterinary visits easier, tell your practice you are working on carrier and handling training. Many will let you bring the cat in for a short visit with no examination, which is one of the most useful training sessions available and costs almost nothing.