“Herding cats” may be shorthand for an impossible task, but according to Monique Udell, Director of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab at Oregon State University, cats can be trained. We’ll hear what she’s learning about the relationship between cats and people, and how they can each improve each other’s lives.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Herding cats may have become shorthand for an essentially impossible task. But my next guest says that cats can be trained. Monique Udell is the Director of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab at Oregon State University. Researchers there study the relationships between people and all kinds of animals. In recent years, they’ve done a lot of work with cats. Monique Udell joins us now to talk about what she has learned. It’s great to have you on the show.
Monique Udell: Thanks, Dave. Happy to be here.
Miller: How much research, overall, has there been on cats compared to dogs?
Udell: That is a great question. And I think what we’re seeing is an increasing trend in interest about cats, especially from a research perspective. But we are far behind, we’re probably two decades behind the amount of intense interest that’s been poured into research on dogs. And we’re thinking about what’s been done with cats so far, if we’re thinking about cat behavior and especially cat social behavior, we’re maybe even a little further behind. So we’re definitely seeing an upward trend. And many, many people around the country and the world are showing interest now. But we have a lot of work to do.
Miller: How do you explain that difference though, and I guess it goes back many decades?
Udell: That is actually part of what really fascinates me about the cat-human relationship. So we’ve been living with dogs and cats for thousands of years. Granted, dogs were the first domesticated species, and we have been living with them for longer. But despite that, there are millions of cats living in homes with people. And in fact, by some estimates, cats now outnumber dogs in terms of the number living in human homes, especially in the United States, but really even around the world. Yet, we tend to have a very different impression, culturally, of what cats are and what they’re capable of when thinking about cats versus dogs.
Often, cats have a reputation for maybe being more aloof, or less social, or maybe even untrainable compared to dogs, even with the herding cat statement or reference. And what’s really incredible about this to me is then why do we seek them out so often to be our companions? Why are there so many of them living alongside of us? I think part of it is that this is a bias that we have to overcome. We have to really believe that cats are maybe, perhaps, capable of more than we’ve been giving them credit for, and then ask those questions and really put those questions to the test. And I think time and time again, now that we’re starting to do that, cats are really just blowing us away. They’re proving to be much more capable than what we’ve given them credit for.
Miller: More and more people are talking about cats. So what kind of cat training studies have you done?
Udell: We started out working primarily with kittens, trying to start young, and just people in the general community, asking them to bring in their cats to see if we could do kitten training classes in group settings and individually to see how much interest there would be. We weren’t really sure how many people would believe that we could do this. And in fact, we get lots of interest from the community. When we offer cat training classes, they tend to fill up very quickly and we often have wait lists. So people are really dedicated. Once they sign up, they show up and they’re reliably working with their animals.
The kinds of things that we initially were interested in is just, how can we do this in a way that is both effective and engaging for the human participants, but also effective and engaging for the cats, and contributes to hopefully overall welfare for both the people and cats involved. And part of that is very heavily focused on building positive interactions and positive relationships between the cats and their people, which really comes first, even before what tricks they learn.
Through this process, we’re also realizing that even in a six to 10 week period, people are training their cats to go to mat and stay, to sit, to spin, to walk on leash. And so, really, many of the things that we sort of take for granted that we can do with dogs, if we capture these opportunities to introduce and provide these socialization classes or training classes to cats and people, especially if we start young. And many of these same things can be achieved with cats. We see really positive impacts on the relationship and the well being of both the humans and animals as a result.
Miller: We asked folks on Facebook if they had ever tried to train their cats, and we got a lot of responses.
Roo Bot wrote, “My cat is easier to train than my dog. Small steps building trust and food have helped as have short training sessions. He learned to sit from watching the dogs and wanted food too.”
Dan Gartman wrote, “My partner and I are in the process of training our kitten to not bite us and to play less rough. If we can train him to do more then I would love that. We were told by a friend of ours that you can clicker train a cat with treats. He’s only a few months old, so we’re giving him leeway, but he’s very much a high energy animal and we have to find ways to deal with that in our apartment living situation.”
Both of them talk about ages there. Is it possible, Monique Udell, to train an adult cat?
Udell: Yes, it absolutely is. Just like when we think about with dogs, the saying, “can you teach an old dog new tricks?” Absolutely. The same is true for cats. The one thing that we have to consider about cats, though, is that the expectations traditionally that we’ve had for cats over the years have been very different, in that sometimes, a cat might live many years of its life without ever leaving its home, meeting other cats, engaging with unfamiliar people. We may not have really asked the cat to learn or follow any rules in our household in some cases, where we might have very different expectations for the dogs in our home. We might think, OK, basic skills like being able to walk on leash, or to wait and not rush out the door, or to take your dog places and meet with other dogs. We almost expect that those are basic requirements of dog ownership. And yet when it comes to cats, we often don’t give them those same experiences early in life.
Now, obviously, some people do and I think that’s wonderful. I do think it’s changing. But when we’re talking about training older cats, it might just require a little bit more patience and understanding that we may not have always set them up for the same rapid success as we have with other species like dogs, where we’re sort of anticipating that training is eventually coming or might one day come. And so if we’re working with cats that haven’t had a lot of previous socialization, exposure to learning experiences or formal learning experiences, we still are very welcoming and work with them. But we just sometimes have to be a little bit more patient, start at the bottom up and get them familiar with things like being in an unfamiliar place, being around an unfamiliar person or even learning to take a treat if they’ve never had a treat before, before we can move on to some of the more complex tasks.
Miller: Am I right that your research suggests people can take their cats on play dates?
Udell: Yes. So, the really interesting thing about cats is that they actually have exactly the same social structure as our dogs, as domestic dogs, which is that they’re facultatively social. And what that means is that their early lifetime experiences … and also things like, how much access to resources they have, like, do they have adequate food? Do they have adequate shelter? Do they have enough litter boxes in their home? Those sorts of things can influence how social they are. And of course, there’s also individual differences. But if we give them opportunities to socialize with other cats, and especially if we do this in a slow, careful way, or if we start them young, they can become very, very social.
In fact, there are plenty of cats that live in multi-cat households. There are more multi-cat households than multi-dog households in the United States. And in some places, we see cats living in huge colonies. So it’s absolutely possible. We just, again, have to be thoughtful about how we approach it. And also keep in mind that there may be some cats that don’t especially want to socialize, and there may also be some cats that just haven’t had the right life experiences or opportunities to feel super comfortable with it right out of the gate. So it’s about knowing your individual, it’s about knowing those previous experiences. But it’s definitely possible.
Miller: Candi Roberts on Facebook wrote, “Some cats are more amenable than others. I have had cats that would come when called and clearly understood the word “No,” but you have to be consistent. Most recently, we had a very food-oriented cat who would sit and stop meowing before we put her food dish down.”
Lindsay Hostetler wrote, “I had two cats who were trained to walk on leashes. One was trained to play fetch. It takes a lot of consistency and a cat with a combination of a high play drive, a desire for praise or a high food drive.”
Monique, can you describe just the physical setup of your lab? I’m just wondering what kind of thought goes into creating a space that’ll make your subjects most comfortable?
Udell: Right now, the space where we bring cats into when we work with them to train them, what we try to do is we try to make that space as sort of comfortable as possible. So try to have soft edges, lots of things that like blankets are present. We might dim the lights if we have a cat that’s maybe a little bit nervous about coming out of a carrier or being sort of in a new space. We try to keep things quiet. Some cats actually like there to be some background noise. So we might play calming music. There are certain pheromones that can be used to help in calming cats in some cases. And so what we try to do is identify the things by watching the cat and sort of taking the cat’s lead, that seem to be helping that individual feel most comfortable in that environment.
And then I think another aspect is also just a lot of patience. I think sometimes, when we have a goal in mind, we might be eager and ready to get started and maybe even in a bit of a hurry to get started. Sometimes just taking that step back, and taking a look at what the cat is doing, and letting them lead a little bit, and waiting until they feel comfortable, or until they start to explore, or show interest in you, or the things in the environment, that can make just as much difference as what’s actually in the room physically. So I think that combination of setting up a space that feels comfortable, that the cat has some choice, and then also being patient and making sure that the training that’s happening or the interactions that are happening are going both ways, that it’s a conversation and not just the human sort of telling the cat what to do.
Miller: As somebody who has spent a lot of time thinking about the relationships between humans and cats, what’s it been like for you to have Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s comment about “cat ladies” become such a topic of national conversation?
Udell: That’s a good question and it has come up, people bring it up in the lab periodically. Ultimately, cats are beautiful animals. The people that work with them and care for them are often such beautiful people. So I don’t think that being a cat lady, or a cat person, is anything to be ashamed of. I think it’s unnecessarily political at times, but at the same time, I think we should be proud of these relationships that we’re able to build with these other species. And I think criticizing that … I don’t get it. I think many of us are standing up and saying we’re proud to have these strong bonds with these animals, and it really helps foster and solidify bonds with other people as well.
Miller: Monique Udell, thanks so much for your time.
Udell: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Monique Udell is an associate professor at Oregon State University and the Director of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab there.
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