How cats start learningIf you are interested in adopting a kitten, it's best to adopt one that had already been weaned. This usually occurs at the age of one month and six weeks. During a kitten's first weeks of life it has a lot of learning to do and they are more than willing to learn all the information they can. How do they learn then? By association: they learn that there are certain things that bring about good results and others that bring about unpleasant results. If they find that something they do is fun and has a nice result, it's likely they will get hooked on doing it. If what they do does not bring about a result, or worse yet, has a bad effect, it's most likely they will not go there again. It's possible to train a cat and it's important to train your kitten. One way to do this is by treating your kitten with a toy or snack or by simply showing it affection when it comes to you when you call it. This will almost ensure the cat will obey you next time. But if you do not treat it, it will most likely be unwilling to heed your call next time. Unfortunately, this also means that your kitten can easily learn to do things that it is not supposed to. An example of this could be when it climbs on the curtains; any person seeing this would probably laugh about it, and the kitten will definitely enjoy the attention. The problem with this is that the kitten will repeat this inappropriate behavior and what's worse yet; it will grow up doing it and destroy your curtains or other parts of the house. Obviously, once an adult cat reenacts this unwanted behavior, the reaction will be quite different and everyone will probably get upset at it. This will most likely confuse the cat, but it will not change this behavior, as a matter a fact, it will probably worsen the situation since the cat will continue to see if you do finally give it the attention it desires. It's very important to be very careful to not prize our cat when it has done something inappropriate, or to even do things that as a kitten may not cause damage, but when the cat has grown up will. When a cat behaved in an inappropriate manner, the best thing is to just ignore it. If you are not able to ignore the situation, make sure to face the situation calmly. The worse thing is to get nervous about it since this will just worsen the situation, and some cats find it amusing to put their owners under this stress. |
