Investigate ideas & techniques for training cats & stimulating their intellects, then introduce these to my cat & see how he responds.

This video is amazing. It shows a guy (Richard Norton) using clicker training to teach his cat to operate a light switch. This is just the sort of thing I’m after for this goal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs

And here’s the Wikipedia entry for ‘Clicker Training’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clicker_training

There are several other videos from Richard of his cats. The next one is not about training but I’ve included it here because it is wonderful beyond description – it is a video of one of his cats giving birth to 2 kittens. It’s 17 minutes long & by the end of it I was moved to tears.

Video of a cat giving birth – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkQQT-Wzicc&mode=related&search=

Although I’ve lived with cats for most of my life I didn’t know it was possible to train them in a similar way to dogs until yesterday.

Inspired by Nora the piano playing cat (who plays piano by choice not by training) I was browsing YouTube videos for unusual cat antics of the musical kind. I came across a few videos of owners training their cats to press down keys on pianos, musical keyboards and similar. The owners were using food treats as a reward when the cat behaved in the desired way, and one of the cats was responding to the voice command “play piano”.

Wow!! If these videos had featured dogs rather than cats would have thought nothing of it, but cats? I felt as though I was watching the impossible happen.

My own cat & I first met each other 4 years ago when he was 5 years old. He moved in with me very soon after that. His previous owner had died and I knew very little about his previous life. However, I was immediately impressed by his intelligence. In the first few weeks he astonished me with his memory, his problem solving abilities, the speed at which he learnt, and many other, related things. Since then he has slumped a bit in that way maybe because the novelty of a new home, new people, new environment has passed & he’s settled into a routine. Nevertheless he still seems very bright.

It has occurred to me that his life with his last owner may have been more stimulating for him with more going on, more people to meet, more challenges to overcome in his environment. I play with him regularly but he’s very picky with the toys he likes and so the choice of games is limited.

After watching the videos of cats being trained I am wondering if this is just what he needs. To train a cat in this way I guess that there are 2 major requirements: the cat needs to be intelligent (by feline standards) and training needs to be first introduced at a young age. He seems to satisfy the first one, and his personality suggests that he may have been exposed to this before I knew him thus satisfying the second requirement.

Also, I think that a trainable cat will need to have the sort of personality which enjoys problem solving and likes pleasing his human. Again, my cat seems to fulfill this.

This may be just what he wants – stimulation of his feline intellect. This goal is for him as much as for me.