Can Your Cat High Five?
April 23, 2018 3:03 PM   Subscribe

Jackson Galaxy, of Animal Planet fame, Launched Cat Pawsitive to increase the adoptability of cats in their shelters.

Now shelters are using the training to teach cats tricks like giving high fives. On a related note, April 19h was National High Five Day.
posted by ShakeyJake (26 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Training shelter animals to approach the front of run or cage doors to greet strange humans is perhaps one of the biggest things I can think of to increase adoptability--any stranger, because to the human it feels like that cat or dog chose you. It's flattering, it creates the story we tell ourselves to create a bond (this dog: she picked me), and it also reduces the boredom and anxiety that kennel living inevitably engender. It's genius insofar as it creates return on investment for adoptability, and it's a ton of fun for shelter volunteers in a way that mucking out after animals or even feeding isn't always.

I'm so glad that Jackson Galaxy is encouraging shelters to realize that they can extend this newish idea to cats, too. Shy cats are legion, especially since cats tend to find kennels more traumatizing than dogs, and especially for adults this brings adoptability up so much compared to just leaving the cat in a cage and hoping it gets bored enough to reach out through the bars.

(Although we also have one of our cats because he will not tolerate cages--starts attacking the bars, gets generally pissy, screams and starts destroying anything he can reach before too long. His rescue was at wits' end--he's a grand cat as long as you don't try to keep him in a cage, one of the best ones I've ever met, but no one is going to adopt a cat who appears to be violently attacking the bars of the cage as they pass through the shelter. They'd been trying to sell him on someone at adoption events where he could just be carried around, which he enjoyed and handled with aplomb, but they'd about given up and were talking about returning him to the feral colony he'd been picked out of when my partner came upon him, bereft after the loss of their previous cat, and more or less adopted him on the spot.

He actually does give high-fives, immediately happily adjusted to walking on a leash in harness, and generally is beloved at the local vet when he saunters in and starts looking to make friends. He's a character, and he's basically a perfect cat as long as you don't keep him in a carrier or a cage for too long. Shelters, man: kennels can be such a ridiculous stress on an animal.)
posted by sciatrix at 3:21 PM on April 23, 2018 [27 favorites]


I encourage all to meet cat high fives with the same disdain due to human high fives.
posted by biffa at 3:24 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


it is right and fitting for cats to continue this honorable tradition
posted by wibari at 4:35 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


My cat hisses at any object that another cat has even briefly gazed upon. We've had to make major life adjustments because we just can't kennel her; if other cats are around she might stop eating and die. The worst part is that I think she was radicalized the first time we put her in kitty jail for the holidays.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:00 PM on April 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


He can, he just doesn't want to.
posted by AFABulous at 6:20 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


The shelter I volunteer at is a shelter that's part of this project! It's pretty cool seeing them train the cats now too! The weekly emails I get as a volunteer now includes progress that all the cats are making, along with all the training the dogs are doing too.

A lot of the cats at the shelter are totally ok with chilling with people since volunteers will routinely just sit in the cat rooms, but seeing them do clicker training in the cat rooms too is pretty great.
posted by astapasta24 at 6:25 PM on April 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


I made the terrible decision to teach my cat to high five. She is extremely food motivated, so it took like 10 seconds.

There were two problems with this. First, she decided that unsolicited high fives would get her a treat whenever she saw one. Secondly, because of her first life prior to Chez Stew, she never really learned appropriate claw use. Everything is better with the claws out, yanno.

So I had to try to untrain her, because what I had ACTUALLY taught her was to reach out at my food and slo-mo try to snag it from me.

Cats.
posted by Stewriffic at 6:34 PM on April 23, 2018 [37 favorites]


Oh man, I have super mixed feels on the use of training shelter dogs to approach the bars - as someone that picked what ultimately turned out to be a fearful aggressive dog that the person passing him on swore was just “shy at first”. People sometimes choose dogs who approach strange humans as a test to avoid fearfulness, and if these animals aren’t actually being socialized, just being taught a trick, that kind of buggers the whole thing up.

But even cats that bite people can’t do too much damage, so I suppose it’s fine.
posted by corb at 6:54 PM on April 23, 2018


We love Jackson Galaxy.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:56 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


My cat can do single or double high fives depending on where he is (I get a single if he's sitting at shoulder height to me on his perch in the kitchen, a double if he's on the floor and I am standing up). I hope this skill will help him in his life if we are ever separated and he ends up in a shelter.

He also has a habit of leaping over the arm of the couch upon which I am reclining and landing on my face in big tangle of limbs and hair and cat feet but I'm hoping he keeps that particular skill on the d/l.
posted by janepanic at 7:14 PM on April 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


I made the terrible decision to teach my cat to high five. She is extremely food motivated, so it took like 10 seconds.

I taught my cat to lick my nose for treats.

By the way cat's tongues are made up of hundreds of little cat claws.
posted by srboisvert at 7:35 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


Training shelter animals to approach the front of run or cage doors to greet strange humans is perhaps one of the biggest things I can think of to increase adoptability--any stranger, because to the human it feels like that cat or dog chose you.

Noooo. This can actually backfire spectacularly because the dogs learn to associate people with super high energy excited states, which might be cute in a shelter setting but gets real old real fast when the dog actually goes home and has a hard time settling down around their humans.

The protocol at the shelter I'm at actually is the opposite. The dogs are rewarded for being chill and hanging out in their kennels calmly because this is the behavior that they'll most likely be doing when their new humans want to just binge watch on Netflix without having to worry about dog in face constantly. One of the main things I do as a volunteer is to just enter a kennel, read/futz on my phone, and ignore the dog until they calm themselves down. Then I can pet them or cuddle them but calmness comes first.

As far as I know, the shelter implemented this because of feedback from adopters who were worried that they ended up with a higher energy than anticipated dog because the dogs would get so riled up and excited when they got back from work.
posted by astapasta24 at 8:01 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


This is so awesome! I volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society and just inquired in our volunteer FB group if they're applying for this program. I don't work with the cats, only dogs, but we have a program called Kennel Buddies that's just like astapasta24 describes: hanging out in the front of kennel to get the dogs comfortable doing so, too.

Honestly I've never seen a dog run to greet every person running by in the shelter because even the most gregarious, people-oriented dogs are pretty overwhelmed by their experience. (They do run to volunteers because they're smarties and know the humans wearing the volunteer aprons carry the treats and the leashes.) However, I do agree with sciatrix that the most important thing about getting an animal adopted is getting the animals to the front of their kennels and connecting with clients walking by. One of the most satisfying things I do as a volunteer is get a terrified dog that is hiding in the non-public side of their kennel to come sit with me in the front near the people walking by and relax, maybe show me a few tricks or work on learning some new ones. People love to see people in there with the dog and it encourages them to stop and chat and learn more. I know it's the same with cats but they don't have the advantage of having big kennels people that volunteers can sit in.

Jackson Galaxy is just the best. Dog people have oodles of canine enrichment ideas and he's really helping cat folks get to give that to their cats, too, with his "catification" training.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:36 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


I made the terrible decision to teach my cat to high five. She is extremely food motivated, so it took like 10 seconds.

There were two problems with this. First, she decided that unsolicited high fives would get her a treat whenever she saw one. Secondly, because of her first life prior to Chez Stew, she never really learned appropriate claw use. Everything is better with the claws out, yanno.

So I had to try to untrain her, because what I had ACTUALLY taught her was to reach out at my food and slo-mo try to snag it from me.

No, Kelly. That's illegal.

(A few decades ago, I figured that my cat Ninja was hungry when she would nip my calves and ankles. Cue positive reinforcement.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:59 AM on April 24, 2018


Our cat uses her high five paw to tap you for attention in a very "Excuse me? I am not being looked at in the manner in which I require and please oh god please look at me" way.
posted by Kitteh at 4:53 AM on April 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


We've got a rescue cat who is pretty well-behaved, but who does not like treats. I suspect there's some trauma there because he actually doesn't like to eat anything unless someone comes over to his food bowl and pets him or otherwise makes approving noises first.

I have no idea how to train him in the absence of bribery; I suppose I'll just have to appeal to his better nature.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:10 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


My cats both high five...for treats.
posted by agregoli at 5:31 AM on April 24, 2018


I actually selected my cat the opposite way. We went to PAWS and there were probably about 60 cats to chose from and we picked the most chill and disinterested one. This is because we had a bad experience cat that we called Sheddy who was 100% demanding 100% of the time when he visited our flat. Ham may have played a role.
posted by srboisvert at 6:14 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Whatever trick you teach your cat to perform for treats, they will perform at 3 AM when they are hungry and you are asleep. I taught my old cat to shake paws and would be woken up in the middle of the night by him shaking paws with my face. Because clawing at exposed flesh=treats!

My new policy is to only teach a cat a trick if there's a prop involved, which can be hidden afterwards. My new guy jumps through a hoop.
posted by Gortuk at 6:24 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


We fostered kittens.

One of the easiest ways to teach a cat or kitten a trick is to have him jump from one chair to another with a hoop in between. Cat on chair A, treat held over chair B, hoop in the middle, let nature take its course. If it's that easy, they learn fast.

Kittens are very enthusiastic.

When it was kitten training time, we'd have to train one at a time, keeping the others inside a closed room. Otherwise it was chaos.

I think -- non-cat-lovers may find this difficult to believe -- no, I know, that what they really loved was the attention. When we trained them, we would talk to them and praise them almost constantly, and they just blossomed. You could tell that they were really into us. This is why I encourage all cat owners to clicker train their cats; it convinces them that you are into them, and they reciprocate readily.

The not-in-training kittens were beside themselves, almost panicked at missing out. They were not lonely or scared. They just loved training time.

There was one who we found just hanging out on the chairs, waiting for us to look his way. When we did, he would jump back and forth, pausing to look for our reaction.
posted by amtho at 7:07 AM on April 24, 2018 [15 favorites]


Whatever you do, never feed a cat when he meows. It's cute the first two times and horrible for the next 15 years. Ignore ignore ignore. The same concept applies to feeding them upon getting out of bed. Pick a routine and stick to it - shower or have breakfast first. I learned my lesson after him and my next two cats rarely wake me up or yowl for food. They get fed at specific times (8 am, 2 pm, 10 pm) and I try never to deviate unless circumstance requires.
posted by AFABulous at 8:51 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


I figured that my cat Ninja was hungry when she would nip my calves and ankles. Cue positive reinforcement.

I knew a family that did this. They bled frequently.

Then there was my ex-wife, who gave old shoes to her dog to chew. The dog really didn't know the difference between shoes she wasn't using any more and shoes I still was.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:03 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Another good cat training item: you can teach them that a particular sound, say, an alarm sound from a phone or MP3 player, is the cue for food service. Then they are less likely to beg you for food; they learn that food only comes when the universe produces, say, the iPhone harp glissando. It worked extremely well with a rather round -- at first -- tuxedo girl we fostered.
posted by amtho at 9:34 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Our three (sequential, not simultaneous) shelter cats were all forward or socially-engaging to some level at the shelter, and they were/are pretty good kitties in the long run.

If nothing else, such training at the shelter indicates a fair degree of socialization. Feral psycho cats aren't for everyone.
posted by Artful Codger at 2:47 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Can we forgo the usual 30-day thread close and just talk about how great our cats are forever?
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:03 PM on April 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


I was going to say that adopting a cat that approaches the bars at the shelter is a bad idea because we did that with one of ours and she is so clingy it's ridiculous. But then I remembered that my other cat was a non-feral stray who approached us in our back yard and rolled around purring even after we fed her, and she's so clingy it's ridiculous. And the one who sat in the back of the cage, who died at 23, was so clingy it's ridiculous.

I have never had a standoffish cat. I agree with amtho. They love the attention.
posted by Peach at 5:04 PM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


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