If you saw the Dreamworks’ animated movie “How to Train Your Dragon,” you may remember a boy successfully training a fire-breathing dragon and not getting killed in the process. You know Dreamworks couldn’t make that animated movie about training cats because training mythical dragons is far more believable.
Despite the odds, biologist John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis, a feline behavior specialist, have written a training manual for humans interested in training their cats called The Trainable Cat.
“Lots of people haven’t even thought about training a cat,” says Ellis. “But they do have lots of challenges in their lives with their cat, like trying to get them in their carrier or giving them a tablet.”
The key to training a cat is not to get killed by your cat in the process. once you master this first step, the next step is to hope your cat will actually listen to you and obey instead of the other way around. Cats can be trained, but it takes far longer and by the time it happens, you’ll probably be senile from the mental stress needed to get a cat to listen to you.
If you’re persistent or just plain stubborn, you can train a cat. The real question is how much time do you want to spend training your cat when it’;s so much simpler just to obey your cat instead?