I have been feeling pretty hopeless training Todd. It seems like he knows exactly what I am trying to do but still has no motivation to learn anything. I give him treats as the motivation for the clicker, but I don’t think he is that interested most times. He seems to know that clicker time is treat time, but is too smart to stoop to tricks for them. I turned to the internet to find some inspiration, as one does. Boy, did it deliver. There is a whole world of cat training that I never knew about. Before my searches were focused on clicker training but one random video that popped up on my for you tik tok page opened up a whole new world of opportunities. There are two accounts that I went down the rabbit whole on: @catmanjon and @kyothecat are two accounts showing their progress on AAC training their cats. These people use augmentative and alternative communication to communicate with their cats and their cats communicate with them. It is pretty fascinating to see!
Regardless if you think these cats actually understand the words that they are using, it is pretty impressive! It makes me wonder if the lack of progress on our part is due to lack of motivation. Being able to communicate for the first time would be highly motivating. Maybe the right incentive is what I am missing.
