Train cat as "hearing ear" cat

[albelle]

Hello everyone,
I had this "brilliant" idea yesterday and after doing extensive searching on the internet, I've come to the conclusion that there are no websites on how to train a cat to be a hearing ear cat. Though several sites do mention that it is possible. I would like to train my cat to tell me when someone is knocking on the door, b/c I don't always hear it in the back of my apartment. However, I'm at a total loss as to how to do this. I have successfully trained my cat, Darcy, to use the toilet (which is a huge blessing!). I know I need to break it down into steps, but I'm not sure what to have Darcy do to tell me that someone is at the door b/c he is always wandering about the place. I would be very grateful if someone could share some ideas on how to go about training such a complicated "trick". Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[lakeriedog]

Both of my parents are deaf, and my mother has always had cats around the house...still does. Years ago, before there were so many light up/blinking light devices for the deaf that can be hooked up to the door bell etc., my mom used this trick.

She used a long piece of ribbon, tied one end of the ribbon to the door knob on the outside of the front door, pulled the other end of the ribbon under the door to the inside of the house, and up to the inside door knob. The ribbon coming from the bottom up and then draping over the inside door knob and needs to be long enough to almost touch the floor again. Then on the end of the ribbon which is draped over she tied a cat toy to the ribbon with bells on it.

She had a note on the front door which said "pull ribbon", and pulling the ribbon would cause the toy to move up and down and make noise. I remember one cat named Snowball who would go crazy whenever someone came to the door, and also would get my mom's attention by running in and out of the room if my mom was not paying attention.

I hope that this helps....nowadays my parents have blinking lights for when the TDD rings, the doorbell, the fax machine, the smoke detector and alarm clock.