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23 Apr Help Your Cats Be More Flexible!
I’m not talking about turning your cat into an Olympic gymnast, I am of course, talking about mental flexibility.
The best place to start is by lowering your cats stress levels, this can be done by encouraging your feline friend to develop the ability to change their mind as and when they need. This is by far one of the most important skills a human can have, but especially so for cats, whose reactive nervous system is much higher than ours.
Once your pet cat acquires the necessary skills they need to be able to negotiate new situations, they will gain all the experience necessary to handle any changes to their routine much better.
Firstly, creating signals..
Are we planning a change in the future? It is necessary to prepare our cats.
The best way to do this, is by calling them over to the particular area that is going to be changed. Then you can make large theatric movements to show your feline friends that new people maybe arriving and noises will be made. But after this, it will be much better, and everyone will be much happier.
Discuss.
If you are able to portray effectively to your cat the idea that something is going to happen, when it does eventually happen, your cat will feel as if they have already been given the alert. We suggest calling upon your cats imagination to relay this effectively.
Even schedule cats not know the full specifics of the change, they will feel much happier that they have been given prior warning.
Practice new skills
Is a good idea to keep your cat thinking at all times, so creates minor changes all the time and let them feel like they are in control of whatever changes maybe thrown at them in the future.
If your cat is in a feeding routine in the morning for example, try delaying that slightly and wait for your cat to remind you. Alternatively, you can assure them it will happen, just as soon as you’re finished your other tasks first. But make sure you do feed them as you said you would!
By doing this, this helps create trust between you and your cat. Planting the idea that even though their routine may have been disrupted, we will endeavour to fix them as soon as possible.
Believe it or not, cats have very limited abilities to understand why change happens, and what may be coming next. Preparing them for this will soon their inevitable anxieties.
Create a vocabulary
If for example, you’re going to be late on Thursdays, tell your that. Obviously they do not have a full understanding of the English-language, so repeat short consistent phrases over and over to help them understand. By keeping your words are clear and consistent, this will help the whole process much quicker.
Trust me, it won’t take my long before your cats begins to connect the words with the actions that may follow!