Training the Cat

Tristan's latest duty is to feed Stitch his dinner at night.

I was inspired the other day by Club Cat member Jill B. She uploaded a video of her cat HOOTe Cat doing some tricks. HOOTe Cat sat on command and gave some paw. Although part-way through the video I thought HOOTe Cat got a look of “That’s great, now where is my treat?” he still did the tricks to the end and then got a treat.

I was inspired. I sat Stitch down with me to watch HOOTe Cat in all his trained glory. Stitch was not impressed, especially when I tried some of the same tricks with him.

Me: Stitch. Sit.
Stitch: (Stands there and looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.)
Me: Stitch. Give me some paw.
Stitch: (Looks off to the right, obviously bored.)
Me: Stitch. Give me two paws.
Stitch: (Clearly not even willing to humor me, shows interest in some invisible creature over near the couch and starts to walk.)

And as he starts to walk away I throw in, “Stitch. Walk away from me.”

Oh yeah. I knew I could get some training accomplished in there. It was quite comical. The quick session reminded me of "The Simpson’s" episode where Bart tried to put Santa’s Little Helper through obedience school.

When I lived in Orange County, my sister and I used to ask Stitch to go get us some ice cream. We offered to lend him money. He, of course, never did get us ice cream. I blamed it on our laziness that we never actually trained him to carry the money out to the ice cream truck with a note for ice cream.

Training Tristan, however, has been much easier. I have been working to teach him how to feed Stitch. I’m not sure if being the youngest has anything to do with it. but of all the boys he seems the easiest to teach. I also see it as an opportunity to further teach him the right way to develop a relationship with Stitch.

Since the two older boys have chores, I thought it might be nice to give Tristan the chore of feeding Stitch his dinner. In my opinion it’s a win-win situation for everyone. Tristan can be a big boy like his brothers and have a daily chore. I can start to share the duties of caring for Stitch. And, of course, Stitch gets his dinner.

If training a preschooler to feed a cat every night is this easy then perhaps I just need to put more effort into training Stitch to get me some ice cream from the ice cream truck. Or perhaps I should start with training him to give me some paw first. Or even better, perhaps I should train him to let me sleep in on Saturday mornings and to ask Kevin to feed him his breakfast.

Maybe I need to work on training Kevin to feed Stitch breakfast. I think I’m on to something. Training the humans in my home seems to be working out better than trying to train the cat. Now that I think about it, I’m convinced that Stitch ha,s in fact, trained me.

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