Be Consistent with Cat Training

Be Consistent with Cat Training
Hi! This is Grace Fitzpatrick on behalf of Expert Village and I am going to talk to you now about the importance of consistency when training your cats to stay off the counter. One thing you want to remember is to start training your cats when they are young. That is when they will learn the best and be most likely to develop habits that will be able to stay with them throughout their life. It is hard to teach an old cat new tricks. When the cats do something bad, you want to immediately punish them and follow through right away with the discipline. If you don't do this, then you might as well not punish them at all. For example if I am in the living room and I hear a cat get up on the counter, I am going to run in there right away with my spray bottle. I'm not going to wait 5 minutes or even 5 seconds to go in because cats have a short term memory. They are going to forget they were on the counter after 5 minutes and let alone why you are punishing them. So you want to be quick and thorough and disciplined and always be consistent with your method. A good way to remain consistent is keep a spray bottle around you at all times so this is why at the beginning I said it is good to have two spray bottles. You can have one in the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen so that right away your cat does something in the same room as you, you can turn to that spray bottle and you are not going to have to go up and get it and be inconsistent with your punishment.