Cat Mom Teaches Her Tabby an Adorable Trick Set to Shania Twain Mic Drop
A tabby cat licking their chops
Some people seem to think that you can't teach a cat to do a trick. They're just too headstrong and independent to bother listening to their humans, and if you try to train them to perform any special tricks or stunts, you're only wasting cat treats! Well, at least, that's what some folks say.
Safe to say, those people have never met Dula, a tabby cat whose mom "Pavloved" her to perform a surprising trick over the pandemic. Years later, Dula still performs this adorable trick whenever a certain Shania Twain song comes on!
OK, but who doesn't get up and move when Shania says "Let's go girls"? Look at that sassy little strut! At some point over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, cat mama @mastermahler7 had trained Dula to associate the first words of "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" with getting treats, much like neurologist Ivan Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell (hence, "Pavlov-ing" the cat). The conditioning stuck, and the Shania Twain-loving tabby cat still comes running at the sound of her favorite song. Treats, please!
In a later video, Dula's mom explained that she had a habit of saying "Let’s go girls" whenever she'd put out wet cat food for her kitties at dinnertime. She eventually started playing the song at dinnertime instead, and it didn't take too long before Dula and the other cats associated the song's opening with food. It really was just that easy!
How to Teach a Cat to Do Tricks
Clearly, it's wrong to say that cats can't learn to do tricks, because they obviously can! It would be more accurate to say that some cats can't (or rather, won't) train well if they don't have the right temperament for it. However, your cat may actually be more receptive to training than you think. It all comes down to how you go about it!
Dula learned her cute "trick" through mostly passive conditioning, which didn't require her mom to do a lot of hands-on training. She just needed to learn that "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" = dinnertime. But training a cat to do a more active trick, like giving a high-five or rolling over, is a much more involved and challenging - though not impossible - process.
So how do pet parents go about training their kitties? Just as with training dogs, consistency and positive reinforcement are key. Pet blogger Homes Alive Pets recommends keeping cat training sessions short but frequent, training only one trick at a time in a distraction-free zone, and using the right tools: a training clicker, ideally, and plenty of tasty treats!
Certain cat breeds, including the ever-lovable Maine Coon, do seem to be more amenable to training than others. Your cat may not end up learning the craziest cat stunts ever, and that's ok. Even so, if you're curious about trying to teach them a few fun tricks, study up on some cat training techniques and stay methodical, and you may end up seeing more progress than you'd expect. And at the end of the day, if all else fails, you can start putting on Shania Twain every night at dinner time and see what happens!
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