A cats education
It is impossible to imagine life today without the cat. As pet he slowly but surely climbs in the popularity-chart. After all, the cat is less labor-intensive in connection with care compared to the dog and the cat can give a lot of love and affection.
A cat is often kept in the house and is left alone by day when everybody goes to work or to school. The necessity of a well-raised cat is therefore huge, because nobody likes to come home after a long day in the office, having to place the plants back, cleaning the earth and seeing the wallpaper torn to shreds etc etc. Too many cats are expelled from the house because of all the mischief they get into, due to the fact that the owner hasn’t raised them well.
Raising a cat is possible despite of the widespread opinion that it is not possible.
A cat’s education needs a completely other approach than a dog’s education. After all, the cat isn’t a small dog! The dog’s education already has a high level, thanks to the thorough researches and the good knowledge concerning dog psychology: The human being can raise the dog in a “doggery” way. In other words: the human being can enter the dog psychology in order to raise the dog in a way the dog understands.
The human being should also raise the cat in a “catty” way! The human being should understand the cat psychology in order to be able to reward, punish, raise in a way the cat understands!
2. Therefore first some words concerning cat psychology
Our house cat is a solitary animal in contrast with the dog which is a real pack animal.
The dog ends up in the family = the pack and is a pack member (if he is raised well) with the lowest rank. The dog feels perfectly happy in a stern hierarchical system in which he perfectly knows the order and acknowledges and recognizes the family members as his superiors. A cat doesn’t. A cat will live together with the family members on a different basis: no submission, but inferiority. This means: Where several cats live together there will exist a superior cat but he DOESN”T manifest himself as the superior dog of the pack which will eat first, mate first, gets the best sleeping place etc.
The superior cat makes sure that living together can take place without fights, growling etc, but he gives a lot of space to the inferior cat. This cat shouldn’t be incorporated in the family. The cat must be inferior with respect to the family members but must get space to live his/her life. This is the point where most mistakes take place with a very nasty consequence: “aggression” of the cat. The owner takes a cat, usually a kitten and this lovely playful little ball of wool is allowed to do anything with the owner: biting the hand or ankles, scratching, possibly even blowing because that looks so tough on a kitten. WRONG! This lovely little ball of wool is busy proving and obtaining his superiority. The kitten grows, the claws get larger, and they shed their teeth. The owner wants to stroke the cat, wants to move the cat to another place, wants to take the cat to the veterinarian, or in worse cases: just wants to do something in the house (this something might vary from cleaning to watching TV) near the cat, and the cat attacks: hard and painful.
Sometimes the situation is intolerable and the cat must leave the house due to “aggression”, although the cat is only superior.
Such a superior cat is hard to re-educate (see further in this article); therefore: prevention is better than cure.
When the kitten joins the family, immediately make sure that he knows that he is inferior with respect to the other family members. If the superior owner does something which the cat doesn’t like, the inferior cat will react on this by ignoring it or by lying somewhere else.