My cat won’t learn Voice Commands for Tricks

[Black Cats Abundant]

I train my very food-motivated cat with her favorite treats, and frankly, she is quite smart! The only issue is... she isn’t! She knows when she sees a treat that she has to do one of 3 tricks she knows, and despite one-on-one training with each trick (focusing on only one per training session) she doesn’t understand the voice commands. She completely ignores it all, drowning out the sound and focusing on the treat. Of the 3 tricks she knows she just does all 3 until she gets it right.

She knows, Spin, Down (Thats Sit, i day down since “sit” sounds like “spin”) and Paw (for pawshake) but when we train all she does is stare at the treat. She won’t do the tricks unless she sees the treat either because she doesn’t know the voice command! She just knows “Treat in line of sight= do one of those things Mom Taught me” When I ask her to do Down and Spin I hold the treat above her head because that’s the only way she’ll do it. For paw I hold it in the right hand while I put out my left hand for her to put her paw on, which is the trick. She sees my Treat hand and tries to bat it out of my hand when I say “Paw” and have to wait a while before she remembers to put her paw on my hand, and when she does all she does is barley touch it, I then gently grasp it and do the shake, while she tries to get the treat from me. I put her paw down before I give her the treat but it distracts her so much that she tries to pull out of the paw shake.

For Spin, I hold the treat at her nose level. I say spin and she will either spin or sit (down) I don’t know how to get her to do it right! I could do clicker training but I don’t know if it would matter, since she just ignores voice commands and that’s all I’m trying to accomplish. Maybe clicker training would be easier? I could say the voice command and hold the treat behind my back, I won’t even use hand gestures. Then I’ll be working on just one trick with my hand at nose level for a while, then I’ll take it away. She will know we are working on Spin, since that’s what she was just doing, and maybe she will spin. I will click and give her the treat. Maybe master that trick and then she will start to learn voice commands for it AND other tricks.

What do you do for cats like this? What works best? how can I help her understand the voice commands, rather than the way I hold the treat?

 

[jcat]

I clicker trained Mowgli using both hand and spoken commands. At first I used both (while hiding the treats in my pocket), then alternated them, but always using the clicker. Nowadays he doesn't need the clicker and reacts to either the hand signal or the voice command. He doesn't do anything fancy, just "sit", "(jump) up", "down", "paw" (which worked better than "shake"), and "high five".

 

[Mamanyt1953]

I would certainly try clicker training, if for no other reason that she will not SEE the treat and be so focused on that to the exclusion of what you are saying.