Training & Behavior

Plum stared at my raised palm like it had personally offended her, and I realised I was trying to teach a cat a trick she had no reason to want, which is the first mistake everyone makes with a cat and the one I keep making. The high-five started as a joke at a friend's house, where their cat slapped hands on command, and I came home convinced my own cat was merely under-trained rather than, as it turned out, entirely uninterested.

I did the sensible thing first, because I'd read the clicker advice by then, and started with the clicker as a marker, not the lure, clicking the instant her paw left the floor near my hand and feeding a treat she actually valued, not the dry biscuit she tolerates. For three days it worked, sort of, she'd tap my fingers for the good food, and I allowed myself a foolish pride, the pride of a person whose cat is doing a party trick for guests who aren't there.

Then she quit. Not gradually, not with a sulk, but with the clean decisiveness of a cat who'd calculated the exchange and found it wanting, the treat wasn't worth the performance, and once that maths flipped in her head no amount of clicking would resurrect it. I'd been paying in something she rated a four out of ten, and a cat will not rehearse for a four, and the honesty of that refusal is the part I respect even as it stings.

The lesson, which I keep relearning, is that a cat trains on her own terms, and the trick belongs to her the moment she decides it's worth her effort, not when I decide she should know it. My friend's cat loves the game because the game suits her, and Plum's disinterest isn't defiance, it's a preference, and treating a preference as a failure is the human error, not the cat's. She'll sit on my lap for an hour but won't slap my hand for a biscuit, and both are simply her.

I could've pushed harder, changed the currency, offered something she truly wanted, and maybe she'd high-five on command today, but I chose not to, because the point was never the trick, it was the small experiment in whether she'd meet me halfway, and she did, for three days, and then told me where the line was, and a cat drawing a line is its own kind of communication, clearer than any trick. I'd wanted proof she could learn, and she proved it by quitting on her own terms.

What stuck with me was how different it felt from training a dog, where persistence usually wins because the dog wants to please and will grind through a boring task for praise. A cat has no such weakness, and that's not a defect, it's an honesty, and it forced me to be a better teacher, to actually make the game worth her time instead of assuming she'd comply because I asked. The dog let me be lazy. The cat refused to, and I'm a better trainer for the refusal.

If I did it again I'd start with something she already values, a spot on the windowsill, a stroke at the right moment, and build the trick onto a currency she'd already chosen, rather than inventing one and expecting her to care. That's the part the cheerful cat-trick videos leave out, that the trick is the easy bit and the motivation is the whole job, and a cat will happily teach you that if you're willing to be taught, which Plum was, in the only way she knows, by walking away.

Plum still puts a paw up sometimes, when the right food is in my other hand, and I count those as the real high-fives, given because she chose to, not because I drilled her. The cat who refused the trick taught me more about consent and motivation than the cat who performed it ever could, and I'll take the refusal over the routine any day, because it's honest, and with a cat honest is the only thing you can build on.

There's a part of me that's glad she quit, because it keeps me honest, and the moment I start believing a cat should perform for my amusement the memory of Plum walking away resets me, and that's worth more than any trick. The friend with the compliant cat says sometimes she wonders if hers enjoys it or just learned the exchange, and I tell her the truth, that I don't know either, and that not knowing is fine, because the cat will tell you if you're willing to hear no.

I've since taught her things she values, like coming to the kitchen at a small bell for the food she actually likes, and those stuck, because the currency was hers from the start, and the high-five lives only in the three days she humoured me. The rejected trick is now a small story I tell people, and the real lesson sits underneath it, that a cat's participation is a gift she grants, not a behaviour you extract, and Plum grants it on her own strange schedule, which is exactly the cat she is.