Learning, Training and Behaviour 113
Practical feline examples
● The scratch post and/or pad offered to a cat that is scratching the furniture needs
to be made more attractive to the cat than the furniture it is already scratching.
● A toy or game used to distract, or re-direct unacceptable predatory type play
directed towards people or other animals, needs to be more ‘fun’ than the person
or other animal that the cat is ‘playfully’ attacking.
Conditioned motivation
Motivation may be increased by the presentation of a stimulus already associated with
a primary reinforcer. Weingarten (1983) taught rats to associate the sound of a buzzer
with food. Food was then offered freely to the rats, without the buzzer, until they had
eaten their fill and were no longer hungry and appeared uninterested in the food
offered. But when they heard the buzzer they would start to eat again, despite being full.
Practical feline example
● It can be a good idea to prepare a ‘training toolbox’ containing everything neces-
sary for training including all different types of rewards (Bradshaw and Ellis,
2016). If previous training sessions have been fun and sufficiently rewarding for
the cat, the sight of this box can then signal that training is about to commence
and increase the cat’s motivation for training.
Discriminative stimulus
A cat may learn that an event will only occur in the presence of a specific stimulus.
This may be separate from, or in addition to, the stimulus with which we intend the
cat to associate the event.
Practical feline example
● A squirt of water from a water pistol may be used to deter an invading cat from
entering the garden, the aim being that the cat learns to associate coming into
the garden with getting wet. But the cat may still come into the garden when the
person with the water pistol is not around because it is their presence that the cat
has learned to associate with being squirted with water.
Overshadowing
More than one stimulus may be present during classical conditioning. When this occurs
the animal will make the association with the stronger, or more salient stimulus.
Practical feline example
● When teaching a cat to come to call an owner may crouch down, hold a treat out
towards the cat and softly call the cat’s name. The cat may go to the owner, but