Training & Behavior

The cat owned the top of the bookcase, a shelf no human used, which she'd claimed as a perch with a view of the whole room and a distance from the dog she clearly preferred, and calling her down was a negotiation she always won, because a cat asked to leave her throne simply stays, and the room below carried on without her. I'd tried her name, treats, the rustle of the biscuit bag, and she'd watch, unimpressed, from the height.

A friend lent me a clicker, the small box that sings a sharp click a dog will chase across a field, and said try it on the cat, they learn faster than people think, and I doubted it, a cat being a creature of her own counsel, but I clicked and treated, clicked and treated, and within days she'd learned the sound meant a thing worth moving for, the treat appearing wherever the click had sounded.

The shelf was the test. I clicked from the floor and she looked down, clicked again and she tilted, and on the third the click became a reason to leave the throne, because the treat was down here and the click had never lied. She came down the bookcase like it was a staircase built for her, hopped to the floor, took the treat, and looked up as if to say again, and the friend, who'd called me mad for trying, laughed at the speed of it.

Now the click sings and she appears, from the shelf, from the wardrobe, from the dark corner behind the plant where she hides when the dog's loud, and the recall, which I'd have sworn a cat wouldn't bother with, is the most reliable thing in the house. The neighbours, who've heard me click at the cat through an open window, think I've lost something, but the cat thinks I've finally learned to speak her language, which is closer to the truth.

What changed wasn't the cat, it was the signal. A name she'd learned to ignore became a click she'd learned to trust, because the click always paid and the name often didn't, and a creature who weighs every move by the payoff will take the click over the coax every time. The throne she calls hers is still hers, she just visits the floor more, now that the floor sings.

The dog, watching all this, has opinions he keeps to himself, but the cat's new habit means she's reachable when she's stuck somewhere high and the door needs closing, which is the practical win, and the bond, the small one built on a click and a treat, is the one I didn't bank on. She comes when the clicker sings, even from the shelf, and the singing, more than the treat, is what she answers to, a sound she's decided means me, down here, with something for you.

I never thought a cat would come when called, and she never thought I'd learn to call in a way worth answering, and the clicker, that silly little box, is the treaty between us, the song from the floor that brings the queen down from her perch without a fuss, which is the only kind of obedience a cat ever really gives, and the only kind she'd ever have given me, had I only learned to sing in a key she'd trust.