Training cat to respond to summons

[imaginewizard]

Hey so I've been trying to train River to come to me when I click my tongue. What I've been doing is feeding him his favourite treats (which he will run to me if he hears me cracking or shaking the bag) while clicking.

Today I clicked first, out of sight, and River came up to me, and I fed him treats whilst continuing to click. The fact I clicked without having to let him know I had the treats first shows it's working - my question is, when can I stop having treats on me? Obviously I'd like to be able to summon him to me wherever in the house I am regardless of if I have treats on me or not - otherwise I'd just do what I had been doing before and shaking the bag to summon him. But I don't want to stop giving him treats too early in case I stop reinforcing the positive association too early. From other people's experience, is there a good amount of time where a cat will associate something (e.g. my clicking) with something positive to the point where they don't need the treats to reinforce that?

Cheers all!

 

[Kieka]

Cats are stubborn creatures, creatures of habit and thrive on positive reinforcement. Which makes them incredibly trainable provided you work with their nature instead of against it. The clicking associated with the treats is an excellent example of how it can work.

The down side of this is that most training has to be reinforced on a regular basis to maintain the habit. If you want to continue the coming when you click habit you have to continually reinforce it. If you try to keep just the clicking without a positive reinforcement then eventually your cat will learn that there is no benefit to coming and stop coming. 

For my cats I maintain them coming when I call their names by doing it daily at meal time (they get one wet meal a day and free fed dry throughout). Assuming you feed on a schedule of some sorts you just have to click before making any other sounds of getting food together. That retrains your cat to come to clicking for meals and in the long run while he won't get a meal every time you click he will often enough to maintain the habit.

All three of my cats will respond when called nearly every time. Rocket has never let me down or taken more than a few minutes. Link and Fury are a little less dependable and take their time. But they do come eventually. 

If you don't want to adjust to clicking before feeding (or only free feed so can't), you can probably go down to 2 times a week treating with the clicking to maintain the habit. If you notice a decrease in response then increase the number of times done. You could also get freeze dried chicken or another better treat and do one treat a day with the clicking to maintain instead. 

 

[imaginewizard]

Cheers! I do refresh his food bowl twice a day at very vaguely the same time. I'll just click my tongue every now and then when I'm feeding him treats. I mean obviously I'm not going to stop feeding him treats even if he learns to associate me clicking with positivity, so might as well click while I'm at it. 

I mean - at the moment I'm clicking constantly whilst he eats treats to reinforce the connection - if I start to phase into just clicking at the beginning/before and then feeding him treats should that still reinforce the connection? (Just getting (even if very slightly) tired of clicking the entire two minutes he's munching the snack). He should of got the connection enough that I only need to click at the beginning? 

 

[Kieka]

Oh! I tend to look a little too in depth at things sometimes. Makes me an excellent analyst but sometimes I go to far in other things, lol. 

Yeah. Not a problem with just clicking until he comes then stopping. He already has that connection formed so just reinforcing it.