1. Any cat > any thing, no matter how expensive. I wish my carpets and furniture weren't all scratched up, but I really don't care that much.
Corollary: Any manager > any project. The project may fail, but the manager may do another.
2. Let the cat initiate all action. They will let you know when they want to eat/sleep/play/cuddle/hang out. Respond predictably to their action.
Corollary: Keep coding until interrupted by your manager. Smile, listen, pretend to care, agree. Then continue coding.
3. Every time you return (even from the mailbox), greet the cat as if you hadn't seen each other for years. I don't know how cats perceive the passage time, but what difference does that really make?
Corollary: Document everything discussed with your manager and share the notes during your next meeting to remind them of what they probably won't remember.
4. Listen to the cat. They do have words, just not in the same language. Tonality and body language leave very important clues.
Corollary: Learn the definition of terms like: bandwidth, key results, deep dive, follow-up, subject matter expert, and ROI so you know what the hell your manager is talking about.
5. Include the cat in your plans when applicable. They may surprise you by enjoying watching football on TV, relaxing in the yard, or even eating together.
Corollary: Give your manager a status report so they know what's going on. Otherwise, they'll just interrupt you when you're right in the middle of coding a difficult algorithm.
6. If the cat gets scared, growls, scratches, or bites, you probably did something wrong. Identify and correct the problem.
Corollary: If the project fails, it's your fault because it can't be your manager's fault.
7. Even though it's not human, the cat is a member of your family and should be treated accordingly.
Corollary: Even though they can't code and have never built anything, your manager deserves as much respect as anyone else.
Response to corollary on #7: "Anyone else" deserves about as much respect as your cat.
The idea that a creature that enjoys destroying your possessions, arbitrarily ignoring you for most of its life despite depending entirely upon you, expects total obedience despite no contribution or investment, has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it, intrinsically deserves anything so important as respect is ridiculous.
I'm not suggesting you leave your cat or your manager out to rot with the garbage (though I wouldn't argue, in most cases). But to suggest that either of these creatures, by default, deserves any measure of respect is hilarious to me.
has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it
Huh? What has earning money got to do with respect? Many people I respect don't have money as any of their main goals. Surely, money is only a means to an end and not an end in itself.
"The idea that a creature that enjoys destroying your possessions, arbitrarily ignoring you for most of its life despite depending entirely upon you, expects total obedience despite no contribution or investment, has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it, intrinsically deserves anything so important as respect is ridiculous"
That's not negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is when behavior is reinforced by removing an aversive stimulus. Yelling at a cat because it's scratching the couch is positive punishment [1].
And punishment works quite differently from reinforcement to begin with; it is typically less effective for far better socialized species such as humans and dogs, too.
Domestic cats have been domesticated for a long time. Cats which live with humans (or even other cats - they do naturally form colonies) adopt a number of pro-social behaviours to interact with us.
They are in fact very adept at reading social cues - but conversely they are not pack-animals. They don't have the same instinctive need to identify a hierarchy of command, so much as "mess with" and "don't mess with".
How do you think domestic cats came into existence? Prosocial behavior and tolerance of humans are traits that are equal parts nature and nurture in cats. Obviously current housecats are descended from those wild cats that were more accepting of human presence and had traits that made them accepted by humans as well. Still, individual cats must learn to interact with humans, and if they aren't habituated to human presence during the first couple of months of their lifes, they end up very different psychologically compared to if they are.
The domestication of dogs happened a lot longer ago, and probably a lot more organically (more like what you're thinking). The wolves would follow us around while we hunted (or, alternatively, we'd happen on one of their meals and chase them off), and the less human averse among them got more food.
Cats happened about the same time agriculture did. They were attracted to the rodents, and less rodents meant we were happier - and they were happier with a reliable food source. At the beginning it might have helped to not be afraid of humans, but we probably didn't mess with them too much because they were helping us out with all the mice in our grains.
So the difference in behavior is clear, not just from a social species standpoint, but from the domestication path:
The European Wolf was domesticated to dogs as a hunting partner; the African Wildcat was domesticated to kill the rodents that devoured our foodstuffs. For the few few thousand years that was probably enough - they didn't have to make friends with us, just keep our food safe.
Earliest cat domestication evidence is 9,500 years old; earliest dog domestication evidence is about 36,000 years old.
They've still got quite a ways to go ;) Now if we could just start breeding them for social/intelligence instead of how weird and fluffy we can make them. Hard to morally advocate for breeding when the shelter/feral population is so damn high, though. (I feel the same way about dogs, though, tbh).
I questioned artificial selection (breeding), you replied with natural selection (increased reproductive success by adopting to living near humans). Briefly skimming some sources, we are both correct http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702791/#__sec6t...
Do you suggest the presence of humans reduces the reproductive success of non-domesticated cats? Otherwise, how do you understand evolutionary pressure?
Presence of humans increases the reproductive success of domesticated cats (because they get supplemental food and shelter and protection from predators), and decreases the success of non-domesticated cats (because humans are happy to kill antisocial feral cats).
Do you honestly think that some agricultural community hundreds of years ago had nothing better to do than hunt down anti-social cats? It's speculation, and sources suggest the opposite is true, the cats were were simply tolerated: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702791/#__sec6t...
Increase of reproductive success is not an evolutionary pressure and is irrelevant in the context of the comment I was replying to.
I didn't say they "hunted them down," I said they were happy to kill them.
And increase of reproductive success of a very similar population puts all kinds of evolutionary pressure on the less-advantaged population, as they compete for the same things. But more to the point, regardless of the exact words that your parent poster used, they clearly did not mean a very narrow definition of evolutionary pressure.
To be fair it is only in the last 200 years that teenage boys were not working harder than we can even imagine. Take a look at the 'workhouses' in the UK at the start of the industrial revolution. Children worked and worked hard. There was no time for frivolity. People died young and it was hard to put food on the table. If anything cats, feral or not would be happily hunted for a little extra meat.
Punishment also works on cats. You just have to be very consistent when applying it (this is exactly the same for dogs). If you punish your cat(or dog) you have to do it immediately. If the cat is done scratching its nails, and you squirt water, you are too late.
[Edit] Changed negative reinforcement to punishment, rbehrends was correct when he pointed out that negative reinforcement is something different.
The issue (which the article explained badly) isn't that punishment doesn't work; it's that cats don't understand human social cues.
For a dog, yelling is a punishment on its own, because they understand what the tone of voice means. A cat will just think "hmm, the human got louder - I wonder why?" If you're trying to punish a cat for things, you either need a physical stimulus they don't like (spray bottle, for example) or a social cue they understand (hissing is moderately effective, though that's more of a warning than a punishment).
Well, positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement because instead of presenting yourself as an unpredictable angry ape, you're presenting yourself as a source of treats, which is better. Who cares why the cat is getting treats?
I thought the same thing. I hate that any comment on a HN post adds to it's score. I would like this comment counted as a negative. This article is terrible.
The BBC just did a 3 part special called Cat Watch where they follow the lives of several cats in a small town in the UK, attaching small cameras to the cats to see what they get up to, and demonstrating things like how cats use their whiskers to "see" things right in front of them because their vision is poor at close range and how they communicate with us. I recommend it if you're a cat person.
Free cat advice: If your cat is going outside of its litter box, it is most likely because it isn't cleaned regularly (would you like to stand in poop to go the bathroom?). You should be cleaning it at least once per day.
Yeah that's great and all but I've tried that. 3 litter boxes. All cleaned twice a day, and he still shits on the carpet 2 feet away from the box. Lid on, lid off, big sidewalls, different cat litter. I've tried it all. The little shit just likes shitting on carpet I guess. And putting the fear of god into him does nothing.
Your cat might have a bladder or kidney stone which is causing extreme pain when pooping. Please take your cat to the vet and have that checked out.
I ran into the same thing: Cat pooped in exotic, awkward places, but never the litter box. Never looked like she was in pain -- just being stubborn, I figured. Turned out to be a bladder stone brought on by the ingredients in modern cat food (put in place to help other feline health issues, but which causes stones in a small subset of cats). After the stones were cleared up, all litter box issues disappeared.
..but they do love some simple pebbles, which are, fortunately, dirt-cheap (or pebble-cheap :) ) although a little messier to clean than the above alternatives. I think they'd like sand as well (I live in Uruguay and those pebbles are from Argentina, so I don't know what alternatives are in the U.S.).
"Yeah that's great and all but I've tried that. 3 litter boxes. All cleaned twice a day, and he still shits on the carpet 2 feet away from the box. Lid on, lid off, big sidewalls, different cat litter. I've tried it all. The little shit just likes shitting on carpet I guess. And putting the fear of god into him does nothing."
I had a similar problem but with peeing, despite three litter boxes and regular cleaning. He'd go in the same room, five feet away. It go so bad that the carpet started developing some sort of fungal growth, which was gross. I read up on it and apparently some cats develop a "texture preference," especially for carpet.
So in the utility room I used for the litter boxes, I replaced the carpet with some cheap engineered wood flooring (Pergo or some similar knockoff brand). Problem went away. I think it is very weird/uncomfortable for them to go on a smooth hard surface, and carpet is a rougher surface that sort of could feel like dirt or grass.
He's completely normal. Has done this for about a year. Multiple costly vet visits for them to say "What have no fucking clue". I think he just likes leaving me presents to come home to at this point.
Otherwise normal cats who go outside of their litter box are usually upset about something in their environment. Are the boxes near something noisy or surprising? Are they in a private spot where he's not going to get approached while he's using them?
If there's a regular spot where he goes, maybe try putting a box on that exact spot. We had a similar problem a few months ago, where our cat was peeing in the basement on a stack of paper he found. We moved everything away from that spot and put a box there and now he's happy as a clam.
You are right that this is generally true for my cats, unfortunately, one of our cats will periodically go outside the box for other reasons.
For two cats, we have three litter boxes that are cleaned daily, new litter is added every couple of weeks as the level of the litter goes down, and then the boxes are fully emptied and fresh litter added about every three months, and that keeps them mostly happy. Unfortunately, one of the cats will periodically pee outside the box even when the box is perfectly clean, and the reasons are many, and somewhat ambiguous.
Sometimes it's the litter. Either we're trying a new litter, or the manufacturer changes the litter, and the cat doesn't like the new litter for some reason.
Sometimes it's the environment. She's using the litter box and there's a sudden noise for some reason, and then she won't use that box again for a while. Not really a problem when we have three boxes, unless she's been startled while using all of them within a short period of time.
Sometimes she's feeling stressed out. If we rearrange the furniture, the seasons are changing (generally only going into winter does this seem to be a problem,) can't pay as much attention to her for a prolonged period of time, go on vacation, or bring home a new child, she's far more prone to peeing outside the litter box.
She never poops outside the litter box, only ever pees.
We've pretty much just formed a routine to minimize the peeing issues. We keep the litter boxes clean, we make sure we pay enough attention to her, and we try to encourage her to use her litter box at least once a day. If we haven't seen her pee in the litter box for a few days (does not mean she hasn't used it, just hasn't used it in front of us) we start to minimize the available options for her to pee in/on (easier than it sounds, she tries to find substitutes for her litter box, so anything box like, or that she can use to bury, like throw rugs.)
At least in the US the outdoors are no place for cats. I see dead cats on the side of the road far too often. People leave out antifreeze to poison cats so they won't poop in their yard or attack birds. Sometimes they shoot them for fun. And sometimes they saw off their back legs for kicks [1].
I've also seen way too many FIV+ cats come through the shelter system, transferred when they're attacked by FIV+ strays. If you ever need to give up your pet, FIV+ status is an immediate death sentence in many shelters. In no-kill shelters, it means a longer stay because some people are weirded out about "cat AIDS".
Ahh, so much quiter without all those birds and other critters :P
On a serious note: cats usually integrate well with their ecosystem and if they would really pose such a big threat, smaller mammals and brids would just migrate away.
edit: I'm speaking of balanced ecosystems where cats have natural enemies, foxes and whatnot.
There's no scientific evidence that letting cats outdoors cause a decline in bird populations: and that's according to the UK charity that campaigns for the protection of birds[1].
The majority of birds that cats kill are frail, in poor health, or otherwise likely to have not made it through the season anyway.
Having lived in both the U.S. and the U.K. it's interesting to see the two different attitudes to cats. In the UK, letting your cat outside is the norm. The shelter I adopted from wouldn't give you a cat unless you were able to let it out (or the cat had feline AIDS and needed to be kept indoors for protection).
But it's the complete opposite in the U.S, and although that makes sense in some places (a lot more predators in the countryside), in a city like San Francisco the risks seem identical to those of London. It's very strange. Of course, in the UK cat owners aren't legally liable for their cat's actions (cats, unlike dogs, are deemed by the law to be free agents), maybe that's not the case in the states.
Where I live, if you let your cat(s) outside, sooner or later they will be eaten by coyote or mountain lion. I am not exaggerating. There's also the issue of cats decimating the local bird population: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
Well, I did say in my original post I wasn't talking about the countryside. One would hope there aren't mountain lions wandering the streets of, say, Brooklyn.
Cats do kill wildlife, but their impact is often overstated. The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) in the UK has no issues with cats being let out, but recommend they have bells on their collars. The majority of birds that cats kill are sick, frail, or otherwise in poor health.
To quote the RSPB: "there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide"[1].
(We've had a lot of "missing cat" signs on the group mailboxes lately. Woods nearby. Expanding populations of fishers, coyotes, wolves, etc. Did I mention I'm 15 minutes from Parliament Hill? Bears downtown, -35 C winters (with serious wind and a whole lotta snow), +35 C summers (with 90+% humidity), wild beasties in the woods.... I really love Ottawa. I mean, I must. No rationale person would live here otherwise.)
I do understand your concern but we had a cat door for years and the cats were fine, if not happier, going outside at will. The worst that happened was they would occasionally bring in dead/mostly dead animals to show off as trophies from their hunts.
I had no idea that Jackson had a youtube presence. I'm going to have to check it out. His Animal Planet show is hilariously awful, though Mr. Galaxy does seem to know how to interact with cats.
He's kind of like a cringe-inducingly awkward quirky friend you can't stop hanging out with, even though you KNOW it's going to be slightly uncomfortable. I feel the same way about Alex Trebek.
I think his show is great and gives a lot of insight into cats. His approach doesn't sound scientific, but on the other hand he isn't over-intellectualizing behavior.
Exactly where my brain went, and, as a former Wired subscriber back in my teens, I feel like either my memory of them is fuzzy, or they've become more of a click-bait BuzzFeed-y kind of publication as time has progressed. Probably just fuzzy memory. ;)
>He just doesn’t know how to connect your negative reinforcement with his behavior.
I don't know. The one time I got seriously mad at Yoshi (my cat) was when he bit through an ethernet cable. That was the one single time I've actually squirted water at him and threw him out of my appartment.
Since then neither my ethernet cables nor my iPhone USB cables got bitten through any more (he also knows that chewing on iphone cables and headphones is a very good way to get attention).
There's a lot of stuff I let slide with him (maybe too much - I love him to bits), but he really seems to respect the fact that chewing on cables is a total no-go (also: bloody dangerous - some carry current)
Several paragraphs to say "Your cat can't figure out negative reinforcement - their brains just can't handle it! Change the environment instead."
Then right next to that, it's all "You should give your cat positive reinforcement, that totally works!"
Not that it's bad advice to have positive reinforcement come from you and negative reinforcement come from the environment, but the explanation is poor.
Yeah, I also have a 1.5 year old cat who is great at not getting on counters because we threw her (gently!) off of them so many times. In fact, if she gets up on anything she's not supposed to be on, you just have to stare at her and point at the floor, and she jumps off (we have lots of appropriate climbing places, but she hasn't yet figured out that there's a difference between "on the TV stand when it's off, and on the TV stand when we're watching it")
The 6 month old Russian Blue? Not so much. I get the feeling that "negative reinforcement" doesn't apply to all cats all the time.
Cat's definitely do understand punishment for their behavior. My girlfriend's cat will scratch the couch and immediately start running away as he knows we are going to squirt him.
I have a cat and I talk to her and she talks to me.
There's a couch she likes best but I don't want her on it; every time she goes near it I just say "no" and she turns around (she won't get off of it if she's already on it by voice alone, though).
If there's no food left for her she comes to my study and does a very specific meow, and I know I need to replenish the thing.
She sleeps during the day and lives outside during the night, bringing back the occasional dead mouse on the front porch in the morning.
We don't have that many interactions but we understand one another, I think, pretty well.
I live with two cats who both think that you rubbing their bellies while they're sleeping is only their natural due, and they often protest when you stop.
Agreed, that part of the article is simply wrong. My neighbor's big fat fluffy cat comes over whenever it sees me outside and immediately flops over on its back and starts rolling around. It seems to luxuriate in having its belly rubbed, and crave touch in general. Flop and roll, belly rub, get up, rub something, flop and roll, belly rub, over and over. Eventually it's had enough, goes over and scratches a tree, then waddles off.
Unpredictable is my cat weaving its way downstairs every morning in front of me and suddenly stopping. I'm sure something puts his senses on high alert but you'd think after the first few times I tripped on him, knocking him down the stairs, he might learn.
He's been a great addition to our family but, to sum up my experience with a cat: he's an overly neurotic animal with some of the finest reflexes I've ever witnessed.
He thinks that after a few times you should learn to pay attention to what's happening in front of you. What kind of hunter are you if you constantly bump into other hunters? ;)
There is something interesting buried in this article: "Without the cognitive ability to connect your outburst to their scratching, cats see only chaotic aggression."
Unfortunately, the author asserts it without evidence. How cats understand cause and effect relative to humans is something I ponder from time to time.
Reading that article, I can't help but think most of those problems would be a lot less likely to occur if your cat was allowed outside with a cat flap or similar.
If you're cat goes outside you tend not to need scratching posts and litter trays for starters.
Although I'm with you on the litter tray, my poor sofa is a testament to the fact having a cat flap is no prevention strategy! I think my cat honestly just preferred scratching the couch to anything else available...
You know that cats bury their poop, right? When I lived in London, where it's the norm to let your cat out, I never encountered any cat poo in my garden, and we had around half a dozen local cats.
Where exactly are they going to bury it in the middle of a city? They're not capable of digging up concrete, lawns, hard-packed dirt, etc. So they're either crapping in the open, or they're digging up somebody's garden, neither of which is appropriate.
Unless you're literally living on a farm, the world is not your pet's latrine. Give them somewhere to do their business and/or clean up after them.
As someone who started brushing their cats' teeth after cavities/tartar/gingivitis caused a lot of pain and resulted in some expensive extractions, change is possible, but you've got to stick to it 100%, no matter how much blood you lose.
Want to tell a cat to follow you? Stare him in the eyes, then drag your eyes slowly, turn back and start going. The reverse is true too - that's how a cat tells you to follow you.
For a "no" or "get away" I found hissing to be the most effective.
>“Cats don’t understand glass, but they do understand height,” Buffington says
This statement is false, my cat definitely understands what glass is.
1. Any cat > any thing, no matter how expensive. I wish my carpets and furniture weren't all scratched up, but I really don't care that much.
Corollary: Any manager > any project. The project may fail, but the manager may do another.
2. Let the cat initiate all action. They will let you know when they want to eat/sleep/play/cuddle/hang out. Respond predictably to their action.
Corollary: Keep coding until interrupted by your manager. Smile, listen, pretend to care, agree. Then continue coding.
3. Every time you return (even from the mailbox), greet the cat as if you hadn't seen each other for years. I don't know how cats perceive the passage time, but what difference does that really make?
Corollary: Document everything discussed with your manager and share the notes during your next meeting to remind them of what they probably won't remember.
4. Listen to the cat. They do have words, just not in the same language. Tonality and body language leave very important clues.
Corollary: Learn the definition of terms like: bandwidth, key results, deep dive, follow-up, subject matter expert, and ROI so you know what the hell your manager is talking about.
5. Include the cat in your plans when applicable. They may surprise you by enjoying watching football on TV, relaxing in the yard, or even eating together.
Corollary: Give your manager a status report so they know what's going on. Otherwise, they'll just interrupt you when you're right in the middle of coding a difficult algorithm.
6. If the cat gets scared, growls, scratches, or bites, you probably did something wrong. Identify and correct the problem.
Corollary: If the project fails, it's your fault because it can't be your manager's fault.
7. Even though it's not human, the cat is a member of your family and should be treated accordingly.
Corollary: Even though they can't code and have never built anything, your manager deserves as much respect as anyone else.