How to train your cat to shake hands can be done in various ways, you just have to choose which one is considered easy, and which one is considered difficult.
But to train a cat until it can do it, it takes consistent effort and a lot of patience until the cat understands and can practice it.
How to Train Your Cat to Shake Hands
How to train a cat to shake hands must be practiced from the first stage to the last stage in the right order. Because the method used has been formulated step by step.
So, if there is a step that you intentionally skip, you might fail and even if it doesn’t fail, it might take more time.
Here are steps to train your cat to shake hands
1. Teach Your Cats With Clickers
In the early stages of the process, you can use cat clickers to trigger the cat’s response. Cat clickers are small plastic boxes that contain a piece of thick metal and when pressed, the metal clicks.
The cat clicker’s function is to trigger a cat’s response, so if you press the device and the cat comes to you, then reward it with food.
The food reward you give must be something your cat likes, so the clickers reward will also help you succeed in this step.
If you’ve found the right reward. Then just do it repeatedly until he gets used to the step. Then move on to the next step.
2. Lift your cat’s leg when it comes to you
When the cat is used to coming over and is getting used to the signs you give. The next step is when the cat wants to eat the reward you give, lift the paw.
The leg to be lifted is better to be the right one, as this is the one you will want to shake hands with later.
It’s good to shake hands with the right hand, so train your cat to shake hands with the right paw too.
Lift the right leg with your right hand, while your left hand hold the cat’s prize. Once you’ve lifted it, give the prize.
Do that over time until they get used to lifting their legs before you do.
3. Cut Down on Clickers
If the cat has lifted a paw without you needing to lift it, then it’s a sign that the cat needs to level up and get a new mission.
The mission is to come closer when you make a certain sound while holding out your hand. So how do you do that?
The next way to train a cat to shake hands is to reduce clickers, so let’s say you usually practice 10 times. Then you can try using clickers as a caller 8 times. The other 2 exercises are done without clickers, just use a specific call by lifting your hand. You can call your cat with calls like: “Jerry, hand!” or “handshake”, etc. Just choose the words that you like.
Repeat until the cat understands and gets used to coming over when you call and giving your hand.
4. Give Fewer Rewards
The next way to train your cat to shake hands is by reducing the reward, this way the cat gets used to shaking hands even if not rewarded.
The first thing you should do is to reduce the reward amount. Let’s say that out of 10 training sessions, only 8 sessions are rewarded. Do that until the cat gets used to it and doesn’t get cranky. Then reduce the ratio again, for example to 7,6,5, to 4. Remember not to reduce to zero. This is to prevent the cat from getting cranky. So keep trying to reward a few times. For example, give 4 rewards out of 10 exercises. So you can use the give-no-give-no method until the tenth exercise.
How easy isn’t it? As long as it is done consistently and patiently, it must be 100 percent successful.
What Not to Do When Training
There are a few things not to do when teaching your cat to shake hands, including:
1. Don’t lift your cat’s paw for long if your cat doesn’t like it
During training, you need to watch your cat’s reaction when you lift its paw. if the reaction is not a good sign, then don’t lift your cat’s paw for too long. paying attention to your cat’s expression is one of the methods in training your cat.
2. Hold Off on the Gift
When beginning clickers training, don’t take too long to give the reward, or your cat will get upset and leave. Do it quickly to make the cat feel good about the training session. You should also do this in other sessions. In session 3 or 4, you should also immediately reward your cat if it is in the middle of a reward session.
Well, more or less those are the way you train your cat to shake hand.
