The process of educating an animal is arduous, so it requires a lot of patience and calm to be able to carry it out in the most bearable way possible for you and, obviously, for your cat. Now, it's only natural that after a tiring day at work, you lose your temper when you find something in your house or won't let you sleep with its nightly meows.
In this article on our site we want to help you recognize the 5 most common mistakes when scolding a cat so that you can avoid them and understand your feline better. These kinds of situations give rise to disproportionate anger and very inappropriate behavior towards the animal, which do not solve anything because they are completely incomprehensible to him and can even lead to long-term behavioral problems.
1. Give no alternatives
Not understanding the cat's natural behavior is possibly one of the most common causes of conflict in many homes. Many times, there are wrong expectations about how you should behave, as well as not fully knowing what your essential needs are. An example of this is not allowing a cat to scratch or snort at something that bothers him, since, effectively, cats need to scratch and communicate. On the contrary, a feline that does not develop many of these behaviors typical of its species clearly indicates that it is not feeling well.
Pretending to nullify this kind of behavior, supposedly annoying, through punishment is like not allowing him to eat or breathe. Consequently, the cat will feel stressed and will try to perform these behaviors inappropriately, scratching furniture for example. It is for this reason that it is necessary to retrain the feline to direct these behaviors in a positive way for you and for him, following the previous example, acquiring a scratching post and redirecting such conduct towards this element. Consult this other article to offer your cat a suitable Environmental enrichment for cats.
In the same way, when there are behaviors such as excessive meowing, excessive marking, snorting, etc., there is a cause behind it that must be located to improve the well-being of your feline, which you will not find scolding it.
two. Yelling at you and/or physically assaulting you
The vast majority of cases in which a cat is disproportionately scolded is completely unjustified, since is unable to understand the reason for your angeror what you can do to prevent it. This implies that the feline only ends up confused and associates this negative experience with you. Consequently, these negative experiences clearly harm your relationship, since your cat will begin to have an emotional response of fear every time he sees you, damaging the formation of a mutual bond based on trust and understanding.
If you are wondering what is the best way to scold a cat without using shouts, you should bear in mind that to train a cat it is very important to be subtle and avoid generating negative emotions that can associate with you. Therefore, more than scolding, what you should do is dissuade him from performing inappropriate actions to redirect them correctly. Keep in mind that positive reinforcement is always preferable to negative reinforcement. Therefore, choosing negative reinforcement is one of the main mistakes when scolding a cat.
3. Forcing him to smell his feces and/or urine
Following the previous line, there is a belief that it is necessary to show a cat its feces and/or urine so that it understands that you do not want it to do so in an inappropriate place. Needless to say, this kind of scolding is far from forming a learning process to educate him to relieve himself properly in his hygienic tray, this action therefore being an unnecessary and cruel intimidation
Furthermore, finding the cause of why your cat does not relieve himself properly is also necessary, it may, for example, that the urine outside the tray is due to stress or because it has not learned correctly where this is your bathroom. In this video we show you the most common causes of this behavior.
4. Being inconsistent
When training a cat, it is very important to be consistent in how you act. What does this mean? By this we mean that you cannot scold your cat for something that you sometimes allow him to do. For example, if you don't want him to get on the table, never let him. If, on the other hand, you are sometimes permissive or if someone in your family allows him to go upstairs from time to time, your cat will not understand that there is a cause-effect between his action and your response, a fact that will disorient him and generate insecurity because he will not be able to understand you and predict your reactions. This also implies being consistent in his education from when he is a puppy, that is, do not allow him to do what you do not want him to do as an adult so as not to confuse him.
5. Make it late
Finally, one of the most common mistakes when scolding a cat and that many owners make when wanting to educate their cats is trying to correct them after having performed an action considered inappropriate. For example, scolding him once you get home and see that he has done some damage. In these kinds of situations, even though you understand why you are scolding, your cat is simply unable to understand the cause of your anger and will begin to feel insecure with you
Again, offering the correct environmental enrichment, being constant and consistent in your education and opting for positive reinforcement will be the key to success. Of course, not all cats learn equally quickly, so you must be patient. Don't miss this video with our tips:
